The social enterprise organisation: market sector organisations and social problem redress

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the tensions that marketing practitioners in social enterprises experience, and to explore how these tensions impact the development and implementation of marketing activities. Design/methodology/approach Using an approach informed by grounded theory, this paper reports on an investigation of the tensions facing 15 social enterprises. The primary data comprises semi-structured interviews with senior marketing decision-makers, supplemented with archival sources. Findings The analysis shows tensions and dualities inform the social and commercial strategic marketing activities of the social enterprises. These tensions and dualities are linked to how the organization obtains financial resources, the nature of the organization’s growth, working with myriad stakeholders and competitive versus cooperative pressures. A model outlining the dualities and their links to marketing activities is developed. Research limitations/implications The study provides an in-depth analysis of a small, regional sample of Canadian social enterprises. The study serves as a foundation for future research aimed at elaborating the model we propose. Practical implications The findings point to tensions and dualities that play an important role in enabling and restricting the development and implementation of strategic marketing activities in social enterprises. Understanding the nature of these dualities is crucial for social enterprise managers and social marketers as they develop strategic activities. Social implications Social enterprises engage in activities that offer substantial social benefits, yet the development of marketing activities in these organizations requires confronting tensions that must be carefully managed. Originality/value This paper highlights how dualities facing marketing practitioners in social enterprises influence the development of both social and for-profit marketing activities. The paper offers a model of these dualities. The findings help to extend our understanding of the complex environmental influences impacting marketing practices within social enterprise organizations. Understanding the nature of these environmental influences helps to attune marketers to the potential opportunities and challenges of using social enterprise as an organizational form for launching social marketing programs, as well as providing a theoretical basis for future investigations of marketing practice in social enterprise and social marketing organizations.

Social Entrepreneurship and COVID‐19

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to build understanding of the concept of social enterprise in the social marketing community and to report on empirical research designed to develop an understanding the perceptions and practices of marketing within social enterprises. This addresses a significant gap in the current literature base and also provides insights for social marketers seeking to pursue social change initiatives through social enterprise.Design/methodology/approach– This empirical investigation uses a qualitative investigation of 15 social enterprises informed by a grounded theory approach. Researchers conducted interviews with senior decision-makers responsible for marketing activities and strategic policy, and gathered additional data regarding the organizations in the form of archival materials, including strategic planning documents, promotional materials and firm-generated online content.Findings– Strategic marketing practices used by social enterprises are shaped by moral, pragmatic and cognitive legitimacy influences stemming from imperatives to achieve congruence with institutional norms. This study exposes the challenges social enterprises face in developing strategic marketing activities that address business needs, while balancing stakeholder interests linked to the social missions of such organizations.Research limitations/implications– This qualitative study pursues depth of understanding through focused investigation of a small, regional sample of Canadian social enterprises. The findings demonstrate that social enterprises are similar to both not-for-profit and small- and medium-sized firms in terms of their marketing approaches, but face particular institutional legitimacy challenges when developing and implementing strategic marketing activities.Practical implications– This paper highlights the influences of institutional legitimacy on marketing practices and approaches in social enterprises. Understanding these influences is crucial for social marketing practitioners, as they develop strategic activities. The findings from the research provide a baseline upon which to begin to build both our theoretical and practical understanding of the potential utilization of social marketing through social enterprises.Social implications– Understanding the challenges social enterprises face in developing their strategic marketing activities provides deeper insights into social enterprises for social marketers, who might consider using social marketing in such organizations to achieve social change.Originality/value– This paper offers empirical evidence grounded in depth investigations of 15 social enterprises operating in a Canadian context. The findings help to extend our understanding of the complex institutional influences impacting marketing practices within social enterprise organizations. These institutional influences help to attune social marketers to the potential opportunities and challenges of using social enterprise as an organizational form for launching social marketing programs.

This thesis examines five cases of social enterprise organisations from Nepal, a geographically challenged, politically volatile country with poor infrastructure, a high poverty gradient, and high levels of social and gender disparity. The study aims to explore how organisations following principles of social enterprise can address the multifaceted challenges of youth unemployment. Specifically, the study aims to understand the contribution of social enterprise organisations to the improvement of livelihoods of young people in Nepal, through job creation and market integration, fundamentally adopting market principles to address development challenges. The research contributes to the body of empirical literature on social enterprises from Nepal, and social value creation processes through the use of empirical evidence. It uses the qualitative method of analysing the social value creation processes which subsequently informs a range of challenges faced by young people attempting to participate in the market. In terms of methodology, the research implemented a three-step process: literature review, an organisational survey, and five qualitative case studies. Thirty-four self-identified social enterprise organisations were used for survey analysis. Five organisations were selected for detailed case analysis. Using cross-case analysis methods, interviews from 17 representatives and 30 young men and women aged 18– 30 were analysed . A combination of development theory, the theory of social entrepreneurship, and youth perspectives, is used in establishing the contribution of social enterprises to the improvement of the livelihoods of young people in Nepal. The overall contribution of social enterprises is unfolding in two distinct ways. The first level of contribution is revealed in the form of organisations attempting to become financially self-sustainable and market-competitive. The second level of contribution is demonstrated by limited social and economic change as immediate outcomes, and chances of significant and sustainable social change in the longer term. By demonstrating the change process at an organisational level as well as at the participants’ level, the study presents a meaningful explanation of a social enterprise model of development in improving livelihood of young people in Nepal.

Social enterprise has become a global phenomenon, changing the lives of millions of people and addressing social issues that have previously been outside of the reach of governments or the private sector. Many higher education institutions have engaged with social enterprise in a variety of ways, including providing facilities to external social enterprises, supporting and advising student and faculty social enterprises, providing placements and internships for students in social enterprise organizations and embedding social enterprise directly into the curriculum. This chapter reviews the current relationship between higher education and the social enterprise phenomenon. While there is a growing body of research on the concept of social enterprise itself, there is a paucity of research on the pedagogical aspects of teaching and embedding social enterprise into the curriculum. From related literatures on curriculum design, it is clear that a flexible, holistic approach is needed to embed experiential learning about social enterprise to produce learning environments that foster high levels of student engagement and enhanced employability.

PurposeTo study the ways in which the people involve in social enterprises make sense out of what they are trying to do.Design/methodology/approachThe study focused on the issues and concerns of participants in a social enterprise network in Bradford, UK, where the network includes both social enterprises and agencies offering them support. Explains that the study aimed to examine the relationship between the development of social enterprise and organizational identity, processes and problems to determine what shared meanings and sense of shared identity are used by participants to make sense of social enterprise, how these are related to actions and projects within the social enterprise sector, and whether there is network integrity in responding and adapting to changes. Reports on a case study involving exploratory semi‐structured interviews, between November 2005 and February 2006, with 11 key actors involved in social enterprise networks in Bradford, all of which were involved in either delivering services to the community or from agencies tasked with supporting these groups.FindingsFive key themes emerged from the interviews: identifying as a social entrepreneur; organizational identity; common language; growth; and networking. Concludes that the factors involved in the way that actors in social enterprises make sense of their activities include: identity, where most organizations did not identify a heroic leader nor would they choose to become social entrepreneurs; lack of a common metaphor; staying small; and fragmentation.Originality/valueProvides a useful starting point from which to explore the problems faced by social enterprise organizations.

INTRODUCTION: In the eco and responsible tourism sector, social enterprises (organisations which fund their social mission through market activities) can meaningfully engage with local communities in their pursuit of social impact. OBJECTIVES: This paper explores the trade-offs social enterprises make to balance market viability and social mission within the eco and responsible tourism context, focusing on how these trade-offs intersect and impact organisational strategies. METHODS: The research adopts a thematic analysis of data collected from nine social enterprise organisations who partook in semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: Two intersecting axes of trade-offs are presented: how beneficiaries are included in the development of market outputs, and the second on how its social value is dispersed. CONCLUSION: A framework is developed to enable self-reflection and evaluation of the trade-offs and risks involved to social mission and market viability.

Theories on social capital and their effects on social entrepreneurship has mainly underlined the power of social capital to generate enterprises and to foster good relations between third sector organizations and public sector. This paper proposes a different perspective to consider role in build social capital of a third sector enterprise: multistakeholder social cooperative are seen, at the same time, as social capital result, creators, and incubators. To represent this perspective we’ll use a qualitative system dynamic approach in which social capital is measured throw some proxy. Italian Social cooperatives has become during last twenty years main producers of social welfare service: some of them adopt a multistakeholder governance model and declare themselves as “community enterprise” choosing to represent “general interest of the community and integrating in an enterprise activity”. Sometimes they operate integrating disadvantaged people in work activities,these are work integration social enterprise, some of them, as effect of local authorities contracts. are involved in managing public services. Often these typology of social enterprises are engaged by people who come from third sector organizations and this is the way in which they continue their personal commitment in social enterprises. These people bring their relation and these “personal weak ties” are fundamental in developing cooperatives: so social capital developed in other third sector entities is transferred in multistakeholder cooperative. Cooperation of voluntary, customers, community leaders and third sector local organizations are fundamental to establish trust relations between cooperative and public local authorities. These relations help cooperatives to have long term contracts with local authorities contract as provider of social services and make them possible to innovate the services, developing experiences and management models and exchanging them with the public officers. The long-term relations and the organizational relations that linked social cooperatives and public organizations contribute to create and renovate social capital. In this way multistakeholder cooperatives originated by social capital developed in third sector organizations produce new social capital within the cooperatives and between cooperatives (entrepreneurial components of third sector) and public sector. In their entrepreneurial life cooperatives has to contrast the “working drift” in which only workers remain as members of the cooperative while others stakeholders (volunteers, customer, local social leaders) don’t continue their participation in cooperative. These people different from workers are (stake)holders of “weak ties” fundamental to make a worker’s cooperative an authentic social multistakeholders cooperative. To maintain the multistakeholders governance, and the relations with third sector and civil society, social cooperative has to reinforce participation and dialogue with civil society through continue effort of inclusion of people bringing social proposal. We try to represent these process in a system dynamic model, measuring social capital created by social cooperatives through some proxy as number of volunteers and deep cooperation with public institution. Using a reverse-engineering approach we can individuate the determinants of the creation of social capital and so give support to governance that create social capital. In this way, relations between third sector, public sector are at the same time in a social multistakeholder enterprise resulting and building social capital.

Social entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing areas of entrepreneurship. Since the beginning of 21st century, the popularity of social entrepreneurship steadily, but gradually increases. Currently, social enterprises are operating similarly to traditional ones and thus can be seen separate from charity organizations. This concept is well practiced in emerging economies. The concept of a social enterprise and entrepreneurship can be approached in many different ways. The European Union has an operational definition of a social enterprise. In addition, in various European countries, there are some additional laws and regulations defining social entrepreneurship or a social enterprise. In Latvia, both the definition of social entrepreneurship and social enterprises are included in the Law on Social Entrepreneurship. In Sweden or Estonia, there are no common definition or legal framework for social enterprises. In Finland, the situation is the same, but there is a law concerning work integration enterprises. The EU´s operational definition for social enterprises is common for all European countries. The Baltic States and the Scandinavian countries have different perceptions of social entrepreneurship among the population and entrepreneurs. The paper analyses social enterprises in four European countries: Latvia, Estonia, Sweden and Finland by using national and EU-level knowledge sources. In the next phase, two case studies of social enterprises from each country are analysed according to the EU´s operational definition. As a result, the authors identified the similarities and differences of social enterprises in terms of their social mission, business models and governance models and suggested directions for future research.

Digital social innovation: An overview and research framework

In Europe, we are witnessing a growth in the social economy sector, i.e. in socio – economic organizations, which belong neither to the traditional for profit sector (market economy) nor to the public sector (government) (Deforuny, 2001; Young, 2007) - they rather act at the interface of civil society and markets (Jäger, 2010). The main goal of these organizations, called social enterprises or social business, is doing business for socially useful purposes. These initiatives may take the form of traditional Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), like foundations and associations, as well as new kinds of organizations for example social cooperatives, partnerships, funds.Social economy is situated between public and business sphere of administration and combines both, social objectives and the ones profit-oriented. Social entrepreneurship is unquestionably a desirable feature of social economy understood as reaching planned economic objectives with the use of available resources. Another feature comprises in using involvement and creativity of excluded persons and thus, solving social problems, among others, structural unemployment and disadvantage of social minorities as well as strengthening democratic processes, bottom-up social initiatives etc. Achieving objectives, both social and economic, requires using modern management instruments and methods.All of the above mentioned organizations or ventures, which achieve their local, social or ethical mission and goals using methods adopted from the business sector (Defourny, Hulgard, Pestoff, eds.2014). One of these methods is project management. The whole sector of social economy, both in Poland and in Europe, is strongly influenced by projectification process: a lot of the activities are performed in the form of projects. For last ten years projectification of social non-governmental sector as well as the economy sector in Poland was reinforced by EU’s funding stream – hundreds of co-funded projects, which aimed at increasing the level of development and improving the condition of social economy, were implemented. Some of these projects have resulted in the creation of durable, dynamically operating social enterprises, and some of them did not produce any long-term results. In case of successful projects, we can observe an unusual effect of projectification process: the creation of permanent structures, sustainable social economy organizations through the implementation of projects.Although we can identify examples of interesting research on impact of project work on NGOs (Brière, Proulx, Navaro, & Laporte, 2015); Golini, Kalchschmidt, Landoni, 2015) or critical success factors of non-governmental projects (Khang & Moe, 2008), there is a research gap which we would like to address in this paper: lack of research on project management best practices in social enterprises. Thus, the main research question we would like to investigate in the paper is: What are the factors that lead to creation of durable, permanent social economy enterprises from projects?This paper draws on set of qualitative data from broader research on social economy sector conducted in Poland in years 2011-2013 by researchers from the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). For the purpose of this paper we have conducted multiple case study analysis and analysed 36 case studies of existing social enterprises. One of our research goals was to find out, which factors are critical in the process of creation durable social enterprises from projects. Also, we wanted to understand how projectification, influenced strongly by the EU policies, changes the landscape of social enterprises in Poland and helps them achieve success.

The article is devoted to the formulation and substantiation of consistently interconnected theoretical conclusions regarding the main trends of social and legal problems of social entrepreneurship in Ukraine and ways of supporting the development and promotion of social entrepreneurship in Ukraine. It is noted that the current challenges of Ukrainian society, such as war and internally displaced persons, create even more grounds for strengthening social enterprises, and social entrepreneurship itself can be an effective form of such assistance. The study focuses attention on general legal problems associated with insufficient level of entrepreneurial activity, on the shortcomings of legislation regulating entrepreneurship in Ukraine. There are several standard requirements to be recognized as a social enterprise by European investors and other organizations: first, you must be an entrepreneur. As an exception, it is possible to carry out a social mission within the framework of a public or non-profit organization; secondly, the enterprise must have a truly social purpose, and this purpose must be clearly spelled out in its charter or other corporate documents. It is emphasized that without an appropriate legal framework, social enterprises may face difficulties in determining their legal structure and, as a result, will not be able to fully fulfill their social and economic mission. Instead, the establishment of legal status and legal standards will contribute to the sustainable development of social enterprises, the creation of a favorable environment for their activities and the increase of their contribution to the development of Ukrainian society. In addition, the lack of clarity in the legal regulation of the activities of social enterprises is an important factor that prevents their full development, as it leads to uncertainty in their activities and may limit their ability to attract investments or receive financial support. Key words: social entrepreneurship, civil society, socio-legal problems, legal factors, legislation, legal regulation, development.

The needs of communities are endless and unlimited like the needs of individuals. Societies have to meet their reasonable set of unlimited needs to sustain their continuity. Otherwise, social problems become unsolvable and these problems that become unsolvable can be sources of other problems. In this sense, social enterprises are the institutions that have emerged in order to meet the needs of the society and to solve the problems. The close relation of social enterprises with society and social structure and the “social” expression in the concept make it necessary to look at social entrepreneurship from a sociological perspective. In this direction, the aim of this chapter is intended to create a sociological perspective on social entrepreneurship that aims to contribute to social order and welfare rather than commercial entrepreneurship serving the purpose of individual or organizational interest in economic sense. In the context of sociological perspective, social problem, social benefit, social mission and vision, social value, social capital, and finally, social change and transformation concepts and their relation with social entrepreneurship are examined.

PurposeDrawing on an accountability framework developed for social enterprise organizations (SEOs), this paper examines the annual report disclosure practices of SEOs in the United Kingdom in order to investigate the types of accountability disclosed by SEOs.Design/methodology/approachAfter developing a SEO database, and utilizing a bespoke document coding checklist, the annual reports of 129 SEOs were examined.FindingsThe results indicate that while SEOs would be expected to account in line with normative stakeholder theory, many do not provide constructive and voluntary accountability information to their stakeholders, at least through the annual report, and that their focus is on satisfying legal obligations.Originality/valueIn response to calls for research to better understand accountability in new organizational contexts, this paper makes two contributions: firstly, by extending prior accountability research in the NFP sector to consider organizational hybrids, it raises questions about organizational accountability and how it is discharged in situations where an organization operates as a business and yet is accountable for its social mission; secondly, assuming these organizations are driven by their business and social logics, the findings suggest that SEO accountability disclosure practices are inconsistent with the social objectives on which they are based.

In Europe 160 million people are members of social economy enterprises and mutual societies. Members that work at social enterprises usually are bound with an employee relationship with their organization; on the other hand participating in a social enterprise could be their only chance to find a job, especially for economies that face a long-term recession such as the Greek economy. Social enterprises and entrepreneurs invest in reciprocity which represents that positive actions will inspire reciprocal positive actions. The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of reciprocity on members’ decision either to invest in social enterprises or to work for them acquiring in both cases the necessary shares. For this reason, a survey was conducted among Greek members of social enterprises listed in the Greek Social enterprises directory, to investigate their aspects about reciprocity and if these aspects affect their decision to work in a social enterprise or support financially them. The survey process returned 142 fully completed questionnaires. The analysis identified a sub group (5 over 27 items) of the questions used to measure reciprocity that can be used to classify participants into shareholders - members (investors) and shareholders - workers in social enterprises. It is worth mentioning that sex or other demographic characteristics of the respondents do not affect this classification while there are only aspects of positive reciprocity that have either positive or negative effect on the possibility to work in social enterprises. Social entrepreneurs and the Greek state could use these findings in order to direct and manage their expansion efforts.