Strategic Sensemaking within Funding Relationships: The Effects of Performance Measurement on Organizational Identity in the Social Sector

Researchers claim that social entrepreneurship represents a new phenomenon within the social sector. Their studies often distinguish social entrepreneurs according to their emphasis on tracking and measuring their performance. By applying sense making theory to three case studies of funding relationships within the social sector, this study finds that organizations within the social sector employ performance measurement not just as a means of accountability, but also as a tool for making sense of social entrepreneurship as an organizational identity. As such, the article refocuses scholarly attention on social entrepreneurship as a socially constructed phenomenon.