From clipboards to annual reports: innovations in sport for development fact management

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This paper examines relationships between fact management and innovation. How and why a sport for development agency contributes to social innovation by transforming data into accounting assets.

Design/methodology/approach: Actor-Network Theory is used to retrace how and why the managers at Special Olympics Canada innovate as they craft new annual reports.

Findings: Today, most non-profit organizations face increased pressure to better evaluate and account for their mission attainment. We propose that process and organizational innovations are required for effective and efficient fact management, and that effective fact management contributes to social innovations. We submit that translating data into presentable facts involves innovating Collecting, Connecting, Collating and Communicating efforts.

Practical implications/Research Contribution: Innovation in the field of sport for development has received less attention. The proposed model is one of the first conceptualizations of how, and why, qualified facts concerning lives enriched through sport are built. Its practical and theoretical contributions to social innovations are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sport for development
• accounting asset development
• process innovation
• organizational innovation
• business process innovation
• social innovation
• actor-network theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Andrew Webb http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8042-963X