Search results

The Social Enterprise Mark (SEM) is claimed to be the first award that guarantees to the public that an organisation is a social enterprise. To date, there has been limited discussion of its conceptual dimensions and legitimacy. This paper seeks to make a contribution to knowledge by critically discussing its conceptual dimensions and exploring its impact.

This exploratory study uses feedback from participants on open access co‐operative and social enterprise workshops. They were asked to study published SEM criteria then rank ideal types of social enterprise activity (a worker co‐operative, a trading charity and a self‐employed consultant) in order of likelihood of obtaining the SEM.

Workshop participants from different backgrounds drew the conclusion that SEM criteria favour trading charities and community interest companies with social and environmental objects, not enterprises that deliver social benefits through transforming labour relations and wealth sharing. Participants reacted to their own deliberations differently depending on their sectoral affiliation.

Attempts by the academic community to define the social enterprise sector have run into linguistic and practical problems. Definitions tend to privilege one group of social enterprises over another. The arrival of the SEM in the UK takes place amidst these conceptual and practical difficulties.

The SEM criteria contribute to social constructions of social enterprise that favour “social purpose” enterprises that explicitly target a beneficiary group or community, and not “socialised” enterprises that transform labour relations, promote participative democracy, and design new wealth sharing arrangements.

The paper suggests there has been a shift away from the co‐operative values advanced by the founders of the UK social enterprise movement. To secure legitimacy, the paper proposes changes to the SEM to re‐establish the conceptual alignment of social enterprise and the social economy.

At the Royal Society of Health annual conference, no less a person than the editor of the B.M.A.'s “Family Doctor” publications, speaking of the failure of the anti‐smoking campaign, said we “had to accept that health education did not work”; viewing the difficulties in food hygiene, there are many enthusiasts in public health who must be thinking the same thing. Dr Trevor Weston said people read and believed what the health educationists propounded, but this did not make them change their behaviour. In the early days of its conception, too much was undoubtedly expected from health education. It was one of those plans and schemes, part of the bright, new world which emerged in the heady period which followed the carnage of the Great War; perhaps one form of expressing relief that at long last it was all over. It was a time for rebuilding—housing, nutritional and living standards; as the politicians of the day were saying, you cannot build democracy—hadn't the world just been made “safe for democracy?”—on an empty belly and life in a hovel. People knew little or nothing about health or how to safeguard it; health education seemed right and proper at this time. There were few such conceptions in France which had suffered appalling losses; the poilu who had survived wanted only to return to his fields and womenfolk, satisfied that Marianne would take revenge and exact massive retribution from the Boche!

It was stated in the daily Press recently that an all‐metal aeroplane was being constructed entirely of stainless steel and that such a construction had become possible owing to the introduction of a new stainless steel which could be rolled into thin sheets or strips heat‐treated to give the high strengths and ductility necessary in aircraft structures. An all‐stainless machine would bo extremely interesting as an experiment, but it is doubtful whether such a machine is desirable or would be commercially practicable.

We can think of those with a cynical turn of mind who might consider not a little of the present output of the parliamentary machine as “harem scarem” law, but the indecent haste, the freak urgency of some politically inspired laws apart, it is only too obvious that law is being made under rush conditions, and the reasons are not far to seek. A hectic, over‐active party executive, feverishly pushing ahead with its policies produces impossible working conditions for the parliamentary draftsmen. Law, whether it is statute or regulation, has never been more complex than it is today; time allowed for parliamentary debate is completely inadequate; too many and varied interests have to be taken into account, to say nothing of the vast range of delegated legislation. The urgency of some legislation is doubtful; it is difficult to see the need for all the hurry; a little more time in proper debate would prevent some of the loopholes which subsequently appear and render the law more comprehensible; incomprehensibility and justice are rarely compatible. As Diplock L J., said in the Court of Appeal in Rex. v. Industrial Injuries Commissioner ex parte Cable (1968) 1 A.E.R., 9, a few months ago—“Judges have been at their wits' end to know what some of the provisions mean. It would be a good thing if time could be found to remedy the blemishes.”

Social entrepreneurship has become a growing field of research interest. Yet, past research has been held back by the lack of a rigorous measurement instrument. Rather than defining social entrepreneurship as an organizational form that a venture does or does not have, this paper agrees with Dees and Anderson (2006) that the construct is better thought of as a set of practices, processes and behaviors that organizations can engage in to a higher or a lesser degree. In other words, the construct is a set of behaviors that any organization can engage in. The purpose of the paper is to develop scale items to measure the construct of organizational social entrepreneurship (OSE).

Drawing on previous literature, this paper first develops and then validates scales for measuring OSE as a third-order formative construct. As its second order, the scale includes three components that capture the heterogeneity of the OSE concept: social change intention, commercial activity and inclusive governance.

The OSE scale is developed and tested through a sample of 182 nascent social enterprises from 55 different countries in the world and then revalidated using a second sample of 263 mature social enterprises from 6 European countries. Results suggest that the scale items exhibit internal consistency, reliability, construct validity and nomological validity.

The scale presented here offers an important new venue for social entrepreneurship theorizing. First, it allows scholars to take a broad approach toward a diverse field and to study OSE behavior in any empirical field in which it may occur. Second, the scales also allow for more focused theorizing. Scholars are encouraged to delve into the antecedents of all three components presented here and to study the different performance effects they have in terms of likelihood to survive, growth rate or potential to achieve financial sustainability.

The paper develops a multidimensional construct for OSE. In particular, the authors propose scale items for three central components of social entrepreneurship, namely, social change intentions, commercial activities and inclusive governance. The scales thus measure the three formative dimensions identified by Dees and Anderson (2006) and Defourny and Nyssens (2010).

The purpose of this paper is to explore differences in South African accounting students’ perceptions of professional skills developed in an undergraduate accounting program. South Africa has a history of socio-economic inequality and racial injustice, leading to factors outside the classroom impacting educational outcomes. In particular, South African classes are heterogeneous, reflecting a diversity of race and language groups and students from differing schooling backgrounds. These differences necessitate differentiated instruction.

To explore for differences in perceptions, data were collected via questionnaires and differences between demographic variables such as school, race and language were considered, while controlling for gender. A focus group was also hosted to further explore findings.

Students from better quality schools agreed less strongly than those from poorer quality schools that the education program developed their professional skills. Students from better quality schools may have developed some of the professional skills during their schooling, requiring less to be developed at university. African students, though, agreed less strongly than white students from similar quality schools that they had developed professional skills. A focus group suggested that African students place less emphasis on professional skills development than on technical skills, given their lack of exposure to professional skills through mentors (parents, teachers, etc.) who never developed professional skills during their own compromised education under Apartheid.

Understanding the differences in the perceptions of professional skill development in a heterogeneous classroom can assist instructors in adopting differentiated instruction approaches to enable all students to develop professional skills. It could also assist future employers of these graduates to differentiate their development strategies during workplace training.