IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2017 - 67

conceptualizing social impact is through changes to
one or more of the following:
■ people's way of life - that is, how they live, work,
play and interact with one another on a day-to-day
basis;
■ their culture - that is, their shared beliefs, customs,
values and language or dialect;
■ their community - its cohesion, stability, character,
services and facilities;
■ their political systems - the extent to which people are able to participate in decisions that affect
their lives, the level of democratization that is
taking place, and the resources provided for this
purpose;
■ their environment - the quality of the air and water
people use; the availability and quality of the food
they eat; the level of hazard or risk, dust, and noise
they are exposed to; the adequacy of sanitation,
their physical safety, and their access to and control
over resources;
■ their health and wellbeing - health is a state of
complete physical, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity;
■ their personal and property rights - particularly
whether people are economically affected, or experience personal disadvantage which may include a
violation of their civil liberties; and
■ their fears and aspirations - their perceptions
about their safety, their fears about the future of
their community, and their aspirations for their
future and the future of their children.

Social Innovation
Social innovation has been described as a growing
movement of "New ideas that solve social problems [7].
However, ideas will remain simply that, ideas, unless a
praxis occurs by turning the conceptual or theoretical
idea in practice. When attempting to conceptualize
social innovation in Pathways to Systemic Change,
Buckland & Murrillo [7] rightly point out that there is no
one definition of social innovation, nor will there ever be
[7, p. 6]. This is true of the broader concept of IT for
social impact. What should be of interest to us, as Buckland & Murrillo point out, is what each of us understands by the concept, and above all, according to what
variables can we think about it, analyze it, and transmit
it [7, p. 6].

Social Enterprise
As the introduction of this paper has hinted, the label
"social enterprise" has always been very inclusive and
some might say too broad. Organizations like Social
Enterprise U.K. (http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/) and
DECEMBER 2017

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Social Traders (http://www.socialtraders.com.au/) in
Australia have solid definitions that frame what a social
enterprise should be - definitions that organization
and others like Streat and The Big Issue subscribe to.
But unlike the charity sector, there is no regulating body
to ensure these definitions are adhered to [17]. This
paper uses characteristics of social enterprise organizations taken from Barraket et al. [3] and Luke [29] to
present a definition.
Par ticularly, according to Barraket et al. [3],
"Social enterprises are organisations led by an economic, social, cultural or environmental mission consistent with a public or community benefit. They:
Trade to fulfil their mission; derive a substantial portion of their income from trade; and reinvest the
majority of their profit/surplus in the fulfilment of
their mission" [3]. Bull [8] also suggests these organizations have aspirations to trade and generate
earned income (as opposed to charity or grant
finance) as the capital to achieve their social missions [15], [34].

IT for Social Impact
There is no consensus on one definition of "IT for
social impact." Rather there are number of terminologies and descriptions that are used interchangeably. As Kling [27] rightly pointed out, more than a
decade ago,
"much of the writing about the social changes that
new information and communication technologies (ICTs) could catalyze has relied on over-simplified conceptions of the relationship between
technologies and social change,"
and despite there being
"a substantial amount of analytical and empirical
research about ICTs and social change that could
better inform discussions, unfortunately, the
research articles are scattered in the journals of
several different fields, including communications, computer science, information systems,
information science and some social sciences"
[27, p. 246].
The measurement of level of impact is also problematic when trying to get a "quick fix." As Hull and
Berry [22] point out in regards to traditional scientific, engineering, and technology project outcomes
such as patents, knowledge transfer partnerships,
spinouts, and so on, "benefits to society, culture,
public policy, the environment and quality of life are
much harder to conceive and to deliver" [22, p. 2].

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http://www.socialtraders.com.au/ http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/
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