Goal Setting for Kudumbashree: A Social-Sector Context

The central objective of the social-sector organization Kudumbashree, in the state of Kerala, in India, was to alleviate poverty in the state by facilitating the formation of income-generating micro-enterprises (MEs) led by women. In February 2024, the executive director at Kudumbashree was considering implementing a goal-setting framework that would align the various stakeholders to common objectives and ensure systematic and accurate collection of information related to various interventions. However, most management goal-setting frameworks were applied to for-profit settings, so he wondered if they would work in the social sector. He was considering the objectives and key results framework, which was increasingly popular and required review of the results in the short term. Would applying this framework to Kudumbashree facilitate ME formation and sustenance?

This case is designed for use in undergraduate- and postgraduate-level courses on development management, social entrepreneurship, and social sustainability, with a special focus on how to operationalize goal-setting frameworks and implement data-driven decision-making. It can be used in courses and programs that focus on goal-setting frameworks, sustainability, social sustainability, governance, strategy implementation, business models in microfinance, and organization design to teach students the concept and application of performance-management tools such as OKR in a social-sector setting. Students will learn to evaluate the applicability of the OKR framework for Kudumbashree and suggest relevant OKRs for the organization. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Identify the challenges faced by micro-enterprises and by organizations such as Kudumbashree that facilitate their growth.</li><li>Describe the process of exploratory data analysis, and explain how to use the insights in managing the performance of micro-enterprises.</li><li>Identify the contextual factors that should be considered in creating a goal-setting framework. </li><li>Apply the OKR framework by undertaking a goal-setting exercise for a social-sector organization.</li></ul>

• Social Sustainability
• OKR
• women entrepreneurs
• Social Sector
• microenterprise