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Indicators of economic and social phenomena can be useful descriptive and analytical inputs for public policy. The “social indicators movement” has emerged in the last decade and is devoted to the measurement of widely‐ranging dimensions of human welfare. For the most part, questions of systematic measurement for public policy are explored here. Drawing initially on some traditions of measurement in economics, the principal aim is to provide a broad theoretical frame of reference for policy indicator design. Questions of indicator development necessarily involve ideas of suitability or validity of indicators designed for a purpose. Approaches to indicator design for the purpose of enhancing collective decision‐making—including formal model building approaches—are subsumed as special cases once a more general theory is espoused in sections II and III.

Earlier research highlights the need for the welfare service sector to measure the impacts of their services. However, it seems that the welfare services lack measures to show their long-term effects and impacts. This paper aims to present a framework to measure the multidimensional impacts of welfare service innovations and report the empirical results from two case studies.

In the first part of the paper, the impact measurement literature is reviewed and a framework for measuring the impacts of welfare services is presented. The empirical part of the paper reports the application of the framework in two cases for measuring the impacts of interventions in welfare services in Finland. The aim of the case studies was to assess and illustrate the usefulness of the framework designed.

The framework proposed in the research may serve as a practical tool for decision-makers for assessing the impacts of different services and service innovations in the welfare service sector. This type of assessment is needed, for example, when new service innovations are designed and budgeted for.

This research introduces a framework for measuring the impacts of welfare services at different levels. In addition, the paper provides information about the measurement process and challenges related to the implementation of impact measurement.

This paper aims to identify the focal elements of performance in Finnish welfare service organisations, how performance is measured in welfare services, and what are management needs regarding the development of performance measurement in the sector.

First, the relevant performance management literature of welfare services is reviewed, then interviews with 15 managers of Finnish welfare service organisations in public, nonprofit and for‐profit sectors are reported.

The paper identifies the key elements of performance in Finnish welfare services. The results of the research indicate that Finnish welfare service organisations are relatively active in their performance measurement. Development needs relate to acquiring more systematic performance measurement approaches and new measures for the quality and long‐term effects of services.

Research elaborates the concept of performance in welfare services, thus enabling practitioners to analyse and develop their organisations' performance. The summary of current measurement practices and development needs in current practices serves to develop suitable performance management tools for welfare services.

In welfare services, performance management is a rather complex issue. Research on the topic, especially that on nonprofit, for‐profit and public Finnish welfare service organisations. is meager. This paper provides new information about the issue in Finnish welfare services.

Most current modeling approaches identify very small gains from trade reform. In this chapter, we examine recent developments in the literature to assess whether standard modeling approaches are mis-specifying, understating, or overstating the gains from trade reform. Key areas where the impacts of trade barrier reduction appear to be understated include the measurement of barriers; the aggregation of these barriers; process productivity gains, particularly those resulting from reallocation of resources between firms; product quality improvements and expansion of product variety; factor supply; and investment of gains from trade.

The term “social indicator” has become familiar in recent years in reference to the quantitative measurement of social phenomena. International organisations within the United Nations family and OECD have devoted special programmes to their development, and the term is frequently used by planners, politicians and the press. It has received the accolade of scientific respectability by having a special journal to its name, research programmes of the US National Science Foundation and the United Nations University, annual volumes under its title published by statistical offices of many countries and bibliographies devoted to the literature on the subject.

Revitalising the debate about how to operationalise and measure the extent of welfare states – the so-called dependent variable problem – recent research claims a close theoretical interaction between three different indicators: aggregated data on social expenditure, social rights and social benefit receipt. It is suggested that they all serve as an approximation of welfare state generosity as a dependent variable and help understand variation between as well as change of welfare states. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how these three indicators statistically relate to each other, using data on unemployment cash benefits.

To this end, a time series cross-sectional analysis is carried out, covering 16 European countries for the period 2003–2011.

Results confirm theoretical reflections on the link between the different indicators, whereby higher levels of social expenditure are positively associated with more generous social rights as well as higher levels of benefit receipt. Additionally, the study points to an ambivalent relation between benefit access and benefit levels within indicators as well as across them. This suggests competing policy choices in European welfare states, whereby more generous benefit access implies lower benefit levels and vice versa.

The study contributes to the existing dependent variable literature in a twofold way. First, the conceptual link between the three different indicators and the assumptions they are associated with are critically reviewed. Second, by providing a statistical analysis of the relation between the different indicators across 16 countries, the study goes beyond theoretical elaborations about their association as well as existing small-N or medium-N case time trend studies.

Technologies of measurement and self-monitoring of health data have become part of a metric everyday life in Denmark. As part of a change in Nordic Welfare society, Danish citizens are increasingly experiencing a digitisation of welfare services. This chapter explores the rationales behind the eGovernment strategy of Digital Welfare 2016–2020 in regard to health and discusses how this strategy encourages self-measurement and self-improvement through discourses of improvement at both state and citizen levels. By illustrating how performativity is embedded in current conceptions of health, this chapter emphasises how strategies of digitisation lean on a bio-citizenship where individuals with poor health capacities become dependent, not on a supporting welfare system, but paradoxically on their own self-management skills in order to receive health services. Based on the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse (SKAD) analysis, this chapter scrutinises central documents on the strategy of digital welfare. Our exploration provides a critical insight into the current digitisation of health care by illustrating how new virtues of citizenship are demanded in the digital era in relation to digital health, and furthermore represents a current challenge for Danish welfare in the schism between technology as empowering and a technocratic form of governance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate accountability for farm animal welfare (FAW) in food companies. FAW is an important social issue, yet it is difficult to define and measure, meaning that it is difficult for companies to demonstrate accountability. The authors investigate a proposed solution, the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW), and how it has disrupted the informal rules or culture of the market. The research questions centre on the process of response to BBFAW and the necessary characteristics for BBFAW to play a performative role in the market.

This paper employs an analysis of published BBFAW reports (2012–2017) and case study interviews in five BBFAW firms, in order to address the research questions.

The authors present evidence of a dynamic, repetitive process, starting with recognition of the importance of FAW and BBFAW, followed by internal discussions and the commitment of resources, and changes in communication to external stakeholders. Three necessary characteristics for performativity are proposed: common language, building networks and expanding markets.

This paper reflects a socially important issue that is under-represented in the accounting literature. The results provide an insight into the use of external accounts to drive collaboratively the social change agenda. The performativity process and identified characteristics contribute to expanding this literature in the accounting domain.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an exposition of the concepts relevant to measuring the economic effect of premature mortality and the conception of how the social loss from premature mortality can be incorporated into social welfare measurement. None of the conventional welfare measures currently pick up this welfare signal.

Various concepts are examined in the conventional and “new” literatures of welfare measurement. Six Venn diagrams show how various concepts “fit together”.

This paper outlines a framework for measuring the economic effect of premature mortality in a conceptually appropriate way. Thus the paper shows how the welfare loss associated with premature mortality can be incorporated into social welfare measurement.

Accurate premature mortality measurement is difficult but this data problem hardly limits this exercise. Sensitivity analyses can alleviate this measurement problem.

The main practical implication is that empirical applications are feasible. Time series data can be analysed from this conceptual framework to determine whether the problem of the social loss from premature mortality is improving through time, or worsening.

Knowing the size of the welfare impact of premature mortality is useful not only on policy fronts concerning premature mortality prevention.

“New welfare measurement” has not yet been applied to the notion of the social loss from premature mortality.