A team of leading academics featuring Queen’s Management School has been awarded the 2021 Credit Union Research Prize by the Centre for Community Finance Europe (CFCFE), and will be addressing the highly topical issue of social value, or impact, reporting for credit unions.

Dr Martin Quinn from Queen’s Management School, along with Dr Peter Cleary (Cork University Business School, University College Cork) and Dr Martijn van der Steen (University of Groningen), will bring their accountancy and business expertise to the question of how social impact reporting can ensure credit unions retain their ‘moral legitimacy’, or understood social distinctiveness, in a highly competitive and regulated market which may disrupt  the credit unions’ traditional ways of operating. 

The winning research study will evaluate the usefulness of social value reporting in supporting credit unions’ delivery of their social role. The findings of the study will be relevant to the credit union sector in determining their true value to the communities in which they operate.

CFCFE launched the Credit Union Research Prize in 2020, with the objective of bring new expert voices and ideas into the development of the movement. The 2020 Prize was awarded to a team from University College Cork, and the resulting paper will be published over the summer.