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In Scotland, the self-directed support (SDS) legislation is a catch-all payment system which brings challenges to local authorities, service delivery organisations and the service users it is intended to empower. Set against a backdrop of cuts to local authorities and third-sector funding, this policy presents third-sector organisations with both the opportunities and challenges of commercialising their activities to become more sustainable. The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of the challenges faced by one charity as it engages in a process of hybridity to accommodate changes in its funding due to the introduction of SDS.

The paper utilises a case study approach. The paper captures the experiences and views of managers, staff and parents advocating for their children through interviews with a purposive sample from each group. The challenges of gathering data and giving a voice to caregivers advocating for children with complex needs are discussed, particularly the difficulties in accessing a hard to reach group.

The findings identifies issues which have arisen because of the proposed changed in strategic direction of the organisation due to the introduction of SDS and are all related to hybridity. The findings are arranged in four sub-sections based on the themes that emerged from the qualitative data generated from the interviews: the practical delivery of care; tensions between care and quality, the care workforce, and the parent perspective.

SDS policy has had unexpected impacts and reactions whilst rolling out across regions in Scotland, but policymakers and those involved in the care sector, including consumers, face significant challenges in gathering evidence not only from the vulnerable populations this policy affects but also from organisations already under pressure from austerity-led cuts. This paper presents the challenges to organisations involved in caring for children with complex needs, who are a particularly neglected group of stakeholders.

Organically arising barriers to organisational transition from charity to social enterprise are presented, as staff and caregivers react to the prospect of SDS uptake affecting their organisation. Proactive attempts to embrace a hybrid approach by the organisation are analysed.

Understanding how social care organisations and clients are reacting to the implementation of individual payments as opposed to the previous system of block contracts is crucial as the sector faces very real prospects of organisations closing when individuals are able to pick and choose care. A policy based on choice and control for the consumer risks removing choice through a loss of services in the marketplace, leaving vulnerable populations at risk.

This study is unique. No research has been done exploring the transition of charities servicing children with complex needs in anticipation of self-directed payments creating an open market. The paper further contributes to the existing knowledge regarding hybrid organisations within the third sector.

In this paper the authors investigate precarious value creation in English football clubs. They examine strategic, economic, cultural and social capital to analyse the orientations of legal owners of football clubs (entrepreneurs) and the implications for moral owners (the fans). Their research question is not if entrepreneurs create value – but whether the value created is productive or destructive.

The research design is a case study of the professional football industry, specifically 44 football clubs in the top two professional divisions in England, namely the English Premier League and the English Football League Championship. The authors’ methodology is secondary textual data. Their approach is to examine official club statements, triangulated with regional and national press reports, fan accounts and narratives from published artefacts; fan blogs and websites.

The “opening up” of the professional football industry in England to market forces in 1983 has subsequently attracted entrepreneurs that use football clubs as artefacts to pursue other business interests. Over-grazing on strategic and economic capital at the expense and exploitation of social and cultural capital exists. As entrepreneurial opportunities to exploit a football club's assets becomes more apparent, the unique relationship between club and fan is being strained. The authors observe detachment, disenchantment and protest.

The data sought for this study design was necessarily in the public domain and therefore drawn from secondary sources. The scope was English football and the top two divisions, thus the findings are context specific to that region and level.

For policy, the authors call for a new government inquiry into football ownership in English football, re-examining heritage, purpose and value creation.

Football fans are the majority stakeholder in the football industry but are under-represented in English football because of the private ownership of football clubs. Fans are, however, a barometer for how their owners are acting as custodians of their clubs and if the value created by entrepreneurs is productive or exploitative.

This paper has value in drawing attention to this unique and ignored industry from an entrepreneurship perspective, provoking a call for further research to explore this phenomenon. Sustainable value creation may be a useful framework for further research in this and other industries.

This study aims to explore the opportunities and challenges Self-directed Support policy has presented to Scottish social enterprises, thereby increasing understanding of emerging social care markets arising from international policy-shifts towards empowering social care users to self-direct their care.

This study used guided conversations with a purposive sample of 19 stakeholders sampled from frontline social care social enterprises; social work; third sector; health; and government.

An inconsistent social care market has emerged across Scotland as a result of policy change, providing both opportunities and challenges for social enterprises. Social innovation emerged from a supportive partnership between the local authority and social enterprise in one area, but elsewhere local authorities remained change-resistant, evidencing path dependence. Challenges included the private sector “creaming” clients and geographic areas and social enterprises being scapegoated where the local market was failing.

This study involved a small purposively sampled group of stakeholders specifically interested in social enterprise, and hence the findings are suggestive rather than conclusive.

This paper contributes to currently limited academic understanding of the contribution of social enterprise to emerging social care markets arising from the international policy-shifts. Through an historical institutionalism lens, this study also offers new insight into interactions between public institutions and social enterprise care providers. The insights from this paper will support policymakers and researchers to develop a more equitable, sustainable future for social care provision.

The purpose of this paper is to report the experiences of researchers seeking to undertake mixed methods longitudinal research in the entrepreneurship discipline. In this research, the methodology was thoroughly planned and measures were taken to ensure longitudinal feasibility of the project. This is not what ultimately happened though. The paper reports the experience and reflects on the methodological challenges of longitudinal and qualitative studies, with a view to informing future attempts at these.

The initial study involved a sample of 600+ participants in a survey that investigated entrepreneurial intent and related antecedents and formed the baseline from which longitudinal comparisons would be made. A catastrophic attrition rate rendered neither follow-up statistical comparisons nor qualitative comparative analysis possible. An alternative, entirely qualitative, follow-up was therefore developed. While unintended, this in fact proved advantageous to the research.

Findings comprise reflection on the failure of the intended methodology. Longitudinal studies are notoriously difficult but within the broader social sciences, particularly those that inspect human experiences, there is a rich body of methodology expertise in terms of mitigating the challenges of engaging research subjects, and keeping them engaged over time.

The paper recommends, post reflection and post analysis, that greater engagement with the wider social sciences is needed in business research. As entrepreneurship research moves on to investigate the experiences of the agents of business, methods to investigate these might be better informed.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a conceptual link between the research domains of social entrepreneurship and servant leadership by exploring the proposition that social entrepreneurs may have specific leadership attributes that allow classifying them as servant leaders.

Five servant leadership attributes were identified based on the literature review: altruism, humility, integrity, trust in others and empathy. In an exploratory study, these attributes were examined in a sample of 78 Russian entrepreneurs.

Survey results indicate that social entrepreneurs indeed differ from traditional ones in four of the perceived servant leadership attributes: altruism, integrity, trust in others and empathy. However, no differences in humility between social and traditional entrepreneurs were found.

The limitations of this study are the sample size and the sampling technique used (targeted and snowball sampling). Another limitation is the nature of the instrument used: servant leadership attributes were measured through a self-assessment questionnaire, making it susceptible to a social desirability bias. The study contributes toward setting a future research agenda for the further studies of both social entrepreneurship and servant leadership.

This paper introduces a conceptual connection between social entrepreneurship and servant leadership. No such study had been reported prior to this research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concepts of social enterprise (SE) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Both terms are regarded as pivotal but somewhat related when discussed in scholarship. Despite this few attempts have been made to isolate the manner in which they connect.

In this paper the authors attempt to unpack these two terms in order to isolate key areas of overlap in their use and operationalization. In doing so, the authors address the call for work to synthesize the highly fragmented literature.

The paper demonstrates that, while SE and CSR retain a unique place in the business-society landscape, there is indeed an overlap between the two. The generation of value – social, collaborative, or strategic – appears to be a central theme that connects the two concepts.

The authors offer a detailed discussion of how SE and CSR have contributed to scholarship, and demonstrate that the two terms are indeed interrelated on many levels.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of social enterprise on individual and community health and well-being. It focusses on community food initiatives, their impact on the social determinants of health and the influence of structure on their outcomes.

Using an interpretive qualitative approach through case studies focussed on two community food social enterprises, the research team conducted observations, interviews and ad hoc conversations.

Researchers found that social enterprises impacted all layers of the social determinants of health model but that there was greater impact on individual lifestyle factors and social and community networks. Impact at the higher socio-economic, cultural and environmental layer was more constrained. There was also evidence of the structural factors both enabling and constraining impact at all levels.

This study helps to facilitate understanding on the role of social enterprises as a key way for individuals and communities to work together to build their capabilities and resilience when facing health inequalities. Building upon previous work, it provides insight into the practices, limitations and challenges of those engaged in encouraging and supporting behavioural changes.

The paper contributes to a deeper insight of the use, motivation and understanding of social enterprise as an operating model by community food initiatives. It provides evidence of the impact of such social enterprises on the social determinants of health and uses structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) to explore how structure both influences and constrains the impact of these enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to review current conceptualisations of social enterprise and present a new theoretical model for social enterprise in the UK.

This conceptual paper draws on the rise of social enterprise in the UK context. Social enterprise in the UK emerged around the 1980s, in both political consciousness and as an academic discipline. The paper explores organisational antecedents to develop a conceptual model that prioritises different legal forms of social enterprise in the UK regulatory framework.

In critiquing policy, practitioner and academic publications, as well as the theoretical models that operationalise social enterprise, there are two observations from the literature this paper examines: first, Theories to date have tended to conceptualise social enterprise as a single hybrid form, neglecting a consideration of the various legal identities, ownership and governance types; second, Theoretical models have tended to overlook the cultural, regional and political-economic histories within their conceptualisations.

The value and originality of this paper lies in offering a new paradigm in the conceptualisation of social enterprise in the UK. This is a new contribution to knowledge that strengthens an understanding of the field. This paper creates the space to broaden and appreciate ideologically and operationally different hybrid business types of social enterprises that include charitable, solidarity and entrepreneurial type social enterprises.