Tethering Mission to Context? Exploring Narratives Underpinning the Competing Social and Financial Imperatives of Social Enterprise

Abstract

This paper is derived from a study of the mission statements of a sample of 100 United Kingdom social enterprises. The purpose of the research was to reveal what insight such organisational artefacts provide in relation to the reconciliation of inherently dual social and financial objectives. It relies on multiple phases of qualitative analysis and draws out findings across two key themes: vocabulary clusters and the contextualisation of meaning; and, the presence of rhetoric in terms of communication and strategy.