BUS 374 Week 5 Reflection

     This week the focus was on impact and metrics to gauge that impact. We looked at what an organization does on a daily basis and how that creates a chain reaction causing the long term outcomes that the organization is working toward. We also focused on mission statements and how to create one that directly reflects the organization. This entails a verb, a target, and an outcome. This relates back to the idea that the actions of the organization (the verb) will effect a certain group (target) in a specific way over time (the outcome).

    The video that I like best was Measuring your Social Impact. This discussed the theory of change. It also referred to the theory of change as an impact chain. I really liked that mental image. It goes from the organization to the activity to the output to the outcome. It was a ripple effect. I am looking to go into elementary education after receiving my degree. Part of this involves studying lesson plans and how to create them. The impact chain reminds me a little of this. For lesson plans, you plan backward. You start with what you want the outcome to be and then design specific activities that will yield those results. I imagine that working backward is a way to help organizations ensure that they are meeting the outcomes that they are working toward.

    We also read the article "Starfish Hurling and Community Service." This article broke down some reasons that it is important to really pay attention to what the social impact is of our actions. We might be doing an action, like hurling starfish back into the sea, and all the while we are thinking that we are doing a great act of service. However, this is just what it looks like on the surface. In fact hurling the starfish might actually make things worse. What if those starfish were an important part of the ecosystem and now birds were going hungry or the starfish needed to be removed from the seafloor in order for that ecosystem to thrive. Hurling the starfish back in those cases make it problematic. Thus, before starting an action for the sake of social impact, one should take the time and effort needed to gauge what impact (if any) is being made. This article made me think about something I heard a while back called "voluntourism." This is where tourists engage in volunteer efforts to help the communities they have traveled to see. While this is not inherently a negative, there are some situations where the volunteering has actually been a negative affect on the communities in which they are there to help. This is because the social impact has not been taken into consideration. Instead they just started hurling starfish.