Abstract
By contrasting and confronting the experiences of social enterprises in two Northern English city regions, and exploring the meaning and implications of difference between two broadly similar locations, this paper argues that what social enterprises can achieve depends as much on the context from which they emerge and operate as on the individuals involved. The findings from the research underpinning this paper reveal that each locality nurtures different relational assets, depending on the nature of the institutions and the community and its culture. These relational assets in turn provide diverse incentives and opportunities for the social economy to develop and grow.
Highlights
The social economy, and social enterprise, is recognised as a growing part of local economies and an increasingly important feature of public policy
Significant academic contributions recognise the difference between and within areas in terms of incidence (Buckingham et al 2012); forms of organisation and membership (Borzaga and Defourny 2001; Kerlin 2010); reliance on private finance (Sunley and Pinch 2012); funding environments, local authority engagement and support organisations; identities, values, relationships and governance (Lang and Roessl 2011); and trust and social cohesion (Hatak et al 2016). Building on these studies that recognise the importance of a context-sensitive approach (Lang and Roessl 2011) and of developing a fine-grained understanding of the importance of relational dimensions (Hatak et al 2016), this paper aims to focus beyond organisation-specific characteristics to the social economies in place
This paper provides evidence that different relationships are used as assets/ resources by organisations
Summary
The social economy, and social enterprise, is recognised as a growing part of local economies and an increasingly important feature of public policy. 29) conceptualises the social economy in a legalistic sense, to include social and community enterprises, building societies, charity trading arms, consumer retail societies, credit unions, fair-trade companies, housing associations, intermediate labour market companies, local exchange trading schemes, marketing cooperatives, mutual cooperative companies, social firms, time banks, voluntary enterprises and workers’ cooperatives, while excluding non-trading entities. This is commonly adopted in the UK context where the normative values typically associated with the social economy do not map neatly onto the variety of legal forms these organisations may adopt (Smith and Teasdale 2012). It remains necessary to understand how policies and institutional and cultural legacies shape social economies—understood as a collection of different types of social enterprise—at the local level (Moulaert and Nussbaumer 2005)
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