Transformative Topics July 2025

We are delighted to extend our learnings from the 2023 Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) conference by featuring the impact-focused article "From Theory to Practice: A Collaborative Approach to Social Impact Measurement and Communication," published in the European Journal of Marketing , by Linda Alkire, Laura Hesse, Amir Raki, Silke Boenigk, Sertan Kabadayi, Raymond Fisk, and Andres Mora.

In the spirit of the Transformative Topics Newsletter and its focus on relating the backstory, the authors reflect on what motivated this article and its journey to publication. In the forthcoming weeks we will feature additional research that emerged from the 2023 TCR Conference.

"The publication is a result of a multi-year research effort rooted in transformative service scholarship and our team’s shared dedication to improving the well-being of populations experiencing vulnerability, especially refugees.

This journey formally began in 2018, when Alkire and Fisk published “The Global Refugee Crisis: How Can Transformative Service Researchers Help?,” the first service research article to directly address the global refugee crisis. This work challenged the field to consider how service systems could respond to humanitarian crises and called upon researchers to actively engage with issues of forced displacement. It sparked a larger research trajectory that gained momentum during the 2019 TCR Conference, where we successfully led a track consisting of 13 scholars from 8 countries titled “Refugee Crisis and the Role of Transformative Services: Continuing the Discussion and Building a TSR Refugee Research Network.” The outcomes of that track led to the development of the Transformative Refugee Service Experience Framework, which was published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPPM) and later featured by the World Economic Forum. In that work, we conceptualized refugee service journeys across three stages (entry, transition, and exit) and three systemic levels (macro, meso, and micro), providing a strategic framework and research agenda for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

Building on this conceptual base, our 2021 empirical study in the Journal of Service Research (JSR) introduced the concept of Transformative Service Initiatives (TSIs)—efforts by public, private, and nonprofit actors to improve access and well-being for people experiencing long-term vulnerability, such as refugees, undocumented immigrants, and the unhoused.

This body of work has received several prestigious recognitions, including the 2021 Journal of Service Research (JSR) Best Paper Award, designation as a top-cited article in Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPPM), and finalist placements for both the 2023 AMA-EBSCO-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Marketing and the 2025 Thomas C. Kinnear / Journal of Public Policy & Marketing Award. In addition, all articles from this stream are included in the RRBM Honor Roll for advancing responsible research.

Our EJM article builds on these prior contributions and was catalyzed by the 2023 TCR Dialogical Conference, where we initiated a collaboration with an industry expert from a UK-based nonprofit organization that supports refugee employment. Over the course of two years, we engaged the broader organization, including the data team and case managers, in an iterative, co-creative process to understand and improve how nonprofits measure and communicate their social impact. This process led to the development of a five-module Social Impact Toolkit, tailored to the operational realities of small and mid-sized nonprofit organizations.

We are proud of the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of this project, which not only bridges theory and practice but also powerfully exemplifies the mission of transformative consumer research. We extend our heartfelt thanks to our nonprofit partner(s), the TCR conference co-chairs (2021 and 2023), the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, the European Journal of Marketing, and the wider TCR and ServCollab communities for their continued support and encouragement.

This journey has been both academically impactful and personally meaningful, demonstrating the real potential of marketing scholarship to advance social good. Yet, our work is far from done. As forced displacement and systemic vulnerability continue to rise globally, the need for responsive, evidence-based, and human-centered service solutions is more urgent than ever. We remain committed to building on this foundation, deepening our partnerships, and inspiring future research that champions well-being for all!"

Citation: Alkire, Linda, Laura Hesse, Amir Raki, Silke Boenigk, Sertan Kabadayi, Raymond Paul Fisk, and Andres Mora (2025), “From theory to practice: A collaborative approach to Social Impact Measurement and Communication,” European Journal of Marketing.

Abstract: This paper reports the collaborative achievements of transformative service researchers and nonprofit practitioners and their learning processes for refugee integration and social impact measurement. The purpose of the paper is to present the process of a cocreating a toolkit designed to help non-profit organizations (NPOs) measure and communicate the social impact of their initiatives. Collaboration with a UK-based NPO resulted in the development of a practical toolkit designed to identify and report social impacts that are typically challenging or difficult to measure.

Additional References:

Boenigk, Silke, Aaron A. Kreimer, Annika Becker, Linda Alkire, Raymond P. Fisk, and Sertan Kabadayi (2021), “Transformative service initiatives: Enabling access and overcoming barriers for people experiencing vulnerability,” Journal of Service Research, 24 (4), 542–62.

Boenigk, Silke, Raymond Fisk, Sertan Kabadayi, Linda Alkire, Lilliemay Cheung, Canan Corus, Jörg Finsterwalder, Aaron A. Kreimer, Nadina Luca, Mansour Omeira, Pallab Paul, Marcos F. Santos, and Nina Smidt (2020), “Rethinking Service Systems and public policy: A transformative refugee service experience framework,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 40 (2), 165–83.

Kabadayi, Sertan, Raymond Fisk, and Silke Boenigk (2022), “Ukraine reveals we need better solutions to humanely tackle the growing global refugee crisis,” World Economic Forum, (accessed June 24, 2025), [available at https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/03/ukraine-hospitable-solutions-refugee-crisis/].

Nasr, Linda and Raymond P. Fisk (2018), “The Global Refugee Crisis: How Can Transformative Service researchers help?,” The Service Industries Journal, 39 (9–10), 684–700.