A socio-economic approach to management seeks to reconcile three major categories of performance that underpin organizational sustainability: social performance (broad employee satisfaction and development of human potential at work), societal performance (quality of externalities on society and the environment), and economic performance (immediate results and long-term investment capacity).

Since the 1970s, in contrast to classical Taylorist approaches, several notable management and management control frameworks have aimed to develop socio-economic modes of management.

In the context of the 2023 European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which requires EU companies with more than 250 employees to report non-financial performance indicators, organizations are increasingly encouraged to adopt socio-economic management practices. As a result, these approaches are widely seen as having strong future relevance.