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Background: The world’s population is confronting challenges related to sustainability. Businesses can and should contribute to solving these challenges, through their activities. Social entrepreneurs are the driving force of scaling social enterprises, through which economic and social value can be maximized. Hence, it is important to understand the leadership factors that shape a social entrepreneur’s capability to lead scaling processes. Purpose: To explore the role leadership factors play in social entrepreneurs’ capability to scale social enterprises Method: Ontology- Relativism; Epistemology- Social constructionism; Strategy- Qualitative, Exploratory; Design- Inductive, Grounded theory; Data collection- 11 Semi-structured interviews; Sampling- Purposive, Snowball; Data analysis- Grounded analysis. Conclusion: Several leadership factors, including background, personality characteristics and skills, motivation, team, work environment, networks and partnerships, environmental forces, and underlying factors, are identified as shaping social entrepreneurs’ capability to scale. By acknowledging not only multiple leadership factors but also on what level they exist and how they are connected, novel insights about social entrepreneurs’ capability to scale are offered.

The aim of this study was to examine how two integrating social enterprises relate to and combines social, ecological and economic sustainability and how they work with sustainable development in the field of social work. The study has been focusing on three questions: What are the values underpinning “Macken” and “Vägen uts” approach to sustainable development? What motivates these companies to work with ecological sustainability in the creation of new jobs? How do these companies combine social, ecological and economic sustainability? To answer our questions we have been interviewing nine employees through semi-structured interviews combined with observations and this study was analysed through a symbolic perspective. The conclusion of this study showed that these companies worked with specific themes to reach social sustainability. Recurring themes in the study was empowerment, recovery and the employee’s own experience of exclusion. To achieve ecological sustainability the companies worked with recycling furniture and fabric as a way of creating new jobs. They also had ecological cafés and ecological cultivations. Furthermore the economical sustainability was displayed throw the reinvestment of the profit to hire more people to the companies.

[Context] Social impact refers to the positive and negative consequences of any organization on the environment and society. One actor in the social impact landscape is the impact investor who expects financial return for their investments as well as positive social impact. Although the impact investor plays a crucial role in the social impact capital market by financing organizations that explicitly address social and environmental problems, the academic literature regarding impact investing has yet to develop especially from the investor perspective. One reason for the lack of academic research in this field is that the impact investor stands at a crossroad, between social impact and social enterprise research. [Purpose] Therefore, the purpose of this research is to determine the current state of impact investment processes as well as the challenges that investors face and, lastly, the role of social impact measurement within the impact investing process. [Findings] An exploratory multi-case study was conducted with semi-structured interviews which resulted in eight interviews from impact investors across four countries and within different focus areas in the social impact landscape. The findings show that impact investors face a variety of challenges based on the stage of their portfolio enterprises, the alignment of the social enterprise’s business model with their social impact mission, the horizon of their investments and, last but not least, their investment exit strategies. As for the role of social impact measurement in the investment process, the findings show that the majority of impact investors measure the impact of their investments although the method of measurement varies while the remaining investors, that do not measure social impact, illustrate the challenges that come with measuring impact in their personal contexts such as the difficulty of measuring the impact of an early stage social enterprise that may be susceptible to pivots. / [Kontext] Social påverkan avser de positiva och negativa konsekvenserna av alla organisationer på miljön och samhället. En aktör i det sociala påverkanslandskapet är påverkansinvesterare som förväntar sig ekonomisk avkastning för sina investeringar samt positiva sociala effekter. Även om påverkansinvesterare spelar en avgörande roll på kapitalmarknaden för social påverkan genom att finansiera organisationer som uttryckligen behandlar sociala och miljömässiga problem, har den akademiska litteraturen angående impact investering ännu inte utvecklats särskilt ur investerarperspektivet. En anledning till bristen på akademisk forskning inom detta område är att påverkansinvesterare står vid en korsning mellan social påverkan och social företagsforskning. [Syfte] Syftet med denna forskning är därför att undersöka det aktuella tillståndet för effekterna av investeringsprocesser samt de utmaningar som investerare står inför och slutligen rollen för mätning av sociala effekter i effekten av investeringsprocessen. [Resultat] En undersökande multifallstudie genomfördes med semistrukturerade intervjuer som resulterade i åtta intervjuer från påverkansinvesterare i fyra länder och inom olika fokusområden i det sociala påverkanslandskapet. Resultaten visar att påverkansinvesterare möter olika utmaningar baserat på affärsfas i deras portföljföretag, anpassningen av det sociala företagets affärsmodell med deras sociala påverkan, deras investeringshorisont och, sist men inte minst, deras investeringsutgångsstrategier . När det gäller rollen för mätning av sociala konsekvenser i investeringsprocessen visar resultaten att majoriteten av påverkansinvesterare mäter effekterna av sina investeringar även om mätmetoden varierar medan de återstående investerarna, som inte mäter social påverkan, illustrerar de utmaningar som komma med att mäta påverkan i deras personliga sammanhang, såsom svårigheten att mäta effekterna av ett tidigt skede socialt företag som kan vara känsligt för svängningar.