Michael J. Roy, Pascal Dey and Simon Teasdale
In today’s “market society” almost every aspect of the everyday lives is shaped by market forces. In this essay, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the potential role of…
Abstract
Purpose
In today’s “market society” almost every aspect of the everyday lives is shaped by market forces. In this essay, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the potential role of social enterprise as one means of re-embedding the economy into society to ensure the economy works for people, rather than the other way around.
Design/methodology/approach
This is primarily a conceptual paper: a provocation.
Findings
The authors argue that to work as an embedding force, social enterprise needs to ensure both reciprocity and market exchange while acting in a way that attempts to compensate for the retreat of the state through providing public services and promoting collective decision-making and public deliberation.
Originality/value
Drawing upon the work of Karl Polanyi to conceptualise social enterprise as an “alternative” economic actor within a plural economic system, the authors contribute to on-going debates about social enterprise as an alternative way of organising markets and society. The authors highlight the challenges involved in achieving such a vision and suggest ways these might be overcome.
Details
Keywords
Alan Kay, Michael J. Roy and Cam Donaldson
This intentionally polemical paper will aim to re-examine what is meant by social enterprise and try to assert its role within the current economic system. It is well over a…
Abstract
Purpose
This intentionally polemical paper will aim to re-examine what is meant by social enterprise and try to assert its role within the current economic system. It is well over a decade since John Pearce’s Social Enterprise in Anytown was first published. Since then the term “social enterprise” has been used in multiple ways by politicians, practitioners and academics – very often for their own ideological ends.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper will outline the context and challenges currently facing social enterprise both from outside and from inside the social enterprise movement.
Findings
This paper re-affirms a paradigm for social enterprises through re-imagining how social enterprise should and could contribute to the creation of a fairer and more just society.
Originality/value
Finally, this paper will conclude with a reflection on what Pearce argued and how the social enterprise movement has to position itself as a viable alternative way of creating goods and services based on socially responsible values.
Details
Keywords
Rosemary Lysaght, Michael J. Roy, Jack S. Rendall, Terry Krupa, Liam Ball and Janessa Davis
The aim of this exploratory, mixed methods study was to develop and test a tool that identifies foundational dimensions of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) for use in…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this exploratory, mixed methods study was to develop and test a tool that identifies foundational dimensions of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) for use in empirical studies and enterprise self-assessment. Construction of the initial prototype was based upon a review of the literature and prior qualitative research by the authors.
Design/methodology/approach
A 20-item question pool with a four-point response scale was constructed to explore WISE business and employment practices and strategies for worker growth and development. Three sequential field tests were conducted with the prototype – the first with 5 Canadian WISEs, the second with 14 WISEs in the UK and the third with 6 Canadian WISEs involved in an outcome study in the mental health sector. Each field test included completion of the questionnaire by persons with managerial responsibility within the WISE and evaluative feedback captured through questions on the applicability and interpretability of the items.
Findings
Testing of the prototype instrument revealed the inherent diversity in the field and the difficulty in creating questions that both embrace that diversity and produce unidimensional variables definable along a spectrum. A number of challenges with question structure were identified and have been modified throughout the iterative testing process.
Research limitations/implications
This study identified central domains for inclusion in a multi-dimensional WISE assessment tool. Further testing will help further refine scaling and establish psychometric properties.
Originality/value
This measure will provide a descriptive profile of WISEs across sectors and identify WISE core dimensions for research and organizational development.
Details
Keywords
Chris Mason, Michael J. Roy and Gemma Carey
This paper aims to explore how social enterprises are treated in scholarly research on quasi-markets. In so doing, the paper aims to show that a number of critical knowledge gaps…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how social enterprises are treated in scholarly research on quasi-markets. In so doing, the paper aims to show that a number of critical knowledge gaps persist which require deeper engagement from researchers, practitioners and policymakers alike.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a conceptual analysis of the existing literature concerning social enterprises and quasi-markets.
Findings
The paper finds that there are four main knowledge gaps in this area. First, there are moral dilemmas created by boundary shifts, arising from the development of quasi-markets. Second, the phenomenon of “tactical mimicry” (Day and Teasdale 2016) represents a key theoretical platform not yet fully explored. Third, the lack of clear, comparative assessments of social enterprises across quasi-markets, and other types of service providers is also apparent despite offering a significant methodological opportunity for scholars. Fourth, there is the issue of how social enterprises engage in, and resource the operational functions that will support their management of conflicting logics, especially rigorous impact measurement.
Originality/value
This paper uses a synthesis of key social enterprise and quasi-market studies to extend current debate in this area, which tends to be diffused and complex. By focussing on critical knowledge gaps, the paper contributes a meta-level appraisal of the key areas for future research, providing a focussed agenda for scholars to target their efforts in growing this important body of knowledge.
Details
Keywords
Jane Farmer, Tracy De Cotta, Katharine McKinnon, Jo Barraket, Sarah-Anne Munoz, Heather Douglas and Michael J. Roy
This paper aims to explore the well-being impacts of social enterprise, beyond a social enterprise per se, in everyday community life.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore the well-being impacts of social enterprise, beyond a social enterprise per se, in everyday community life.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory case study was used. The study’s underpinning theory is from relational geography, including Spaces of Wellbeing Theory and therapeutic assemblage. These theories underpin data collection methods. Nine social enterprise participants were engaged in mental mapping and walking interviews. Four other informants with “boundary-spanning” roles involving knowledge of the social enterprise and the community were interviewed. Data were managed using NVivo, and analysed thematically.
Findings
Well-being realised from “being inside” a social enterprise organisation was further developed for participants, in the community, through positive interactions with people, material objects, stories and performances of well-being that occurred in everyday community life. Boundary spanning community members had roles in referring participants to social enterprise, mediating between participants and structures of community life and normalising social enterprise in the community. They also gained benefit from social enterprise involvement.
Originality/value
This paper uses relational geography and aligned methods to reveal the intricate connections between social enterprise and well-being realisation in community life. There is potential to pursue this research on a larger scale to provide needed evidence about how well-being is realised in social enterprises and then extends into communities.
Details
Keywords
Brad Jackson, Matthew Nicoll and Michael J. Roy
The purpose of this study is to present a systematic assessment of the distinctive challenges and opportunities associated with creating leadership within the realm of social…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to present a systematic assessment of the distinctive challenges and opportunities associated with creating leadership within the realm of social enterprise. A modified and expanded form of Grint’s leadership lenses heuristic framework (i.e. person, position, process, performance, purpose and place) is used to examine and highlight what is particular about creating leadership in social enterprises by virtue of their distinctive missions, strategic contexts, legal forms and organisational structures and cultures. Based on this initial exploration, five research priorities are identified to better understand and then develop leadership practice in the social enterprise realm.
Design/methodology/approach
An enhanced heuristic framework for systematically examining leadership within the social enterprise research literature has been applied, drawing on the leadership practice literature. The application is illustrated through six instrumental case studies.
Findings
While there are a number of similarities between leading in the social enterprise realm and leading within the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, the levels of complexity, ambiguity and the lack of an established theoretical and practical knowledge base makes creating leadership in the social enterprise sector that much more challenging. On the positive side of the ledger, the fact that the purpose is at the core of social enterprise means that it is relatively easier to use the purpose to create a basis for common meaningful action, compared to leadership within the private and public sectors. Related to this, given the strongly local or “glocal” nature of social enterprise, a ready opportunity exists for leaders to draw upon a place as a strategic resource in mobilising followers and other stakeholders. The novel, uncertain and pioneering nature of a social enterprise is also arguably more tolerant and accommodating of a leadership mindset that focuses on posing questions regarding “wicked” problems compared to public, private for-profit and, indeed, traditional not-for-profit sector organisations.
Originality/value
As far as we can ascertain, this is the first systematic attempt to examine the distinctive challenges and opportunities associated with creating leadership within the social enterprise realm. The application of the heuristic framework leads to the identification of five key inter-related lines of empirical research into leadership practices within social enterprises.
Details
Keywords
Martin Loosemore, Michael J. Roy, Roksolana Suchowerska, Anna Spiesova and Josephine Barraket
This paper aims to compare the effects of social procurement policies on companies in the Victorian and Scottish construction industries. Scotland and Victoria have led the way in…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to compare the effects of social procurement policies on companies in the Victorian and Scottish construction industries. Scotland and Victoria have led the way in the recent revival of social procurement.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 27 organisations and 28 participants who have experience of implementing social procurement policies into the construction industries of both jurisdictions.
Findings
Findings contribute important new comparative insights from multiple stakeholder perspectives, into the effects of social procurement policies on firms operating in the construction industries of the two jurisdictions. Findings indicate an increasing awareness of social procurement in the construction industries of both Scotland and Victoria. However, differences in policy design determine the nature and extent of this awareness, the level of empowerment felt by actors and the social impact these new policies have in practice. It is concluded that to maximise the social impact of social procurement policies into major industries like construction, policymakers need to carefully consider supply-side limitations, the political context into which social procurement is being implemented and the way they prescribe what types of social value they want to create and for whom.
Social implications
Successful social procurement policy implementation into the construction industry can have significant positive social implications for the communities in which the industry builds due to the large numbers of people it employs and its large multiplier effect into the wider economy.
Originality/value
By investigating the effects of social procurement policies on a cross-section of organisations from across the construction industry supply chain, this international study, contributes new comparative insights to the emerging bodies of research on the impact of public procurement on companies in major industries like construction.
Details
Keywords
Nikolaos Apostolopoulos, Vanessa Ratten, Stavros Stavroyiannis, Ilias Makris, Sotiris Apostolopoulos and Panagiotis Liargovas
The COVID-19 crisis has brought to the forefront the importance of rural health enterprises (RHEs), the peculiarity, in these terms, of rural areas, and the impact of rurality on…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 crisis has brought to the forefront the importance of rural health enterprises (RHEs), the peculiarity, in these terms, of rural areas, and the impact of rurality on health entrepreneurial activities. This paper aims to undertake a literature review regarding RHEs in the EU, identify research gaps and set future research directions.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic literature review was conducted and the key aspects coded across four thematic areas – after examining 68 papers.
Findings
The findings reveal that more intense research should be conducted across four area which emerged; rural health providers vs urban health providers; RHEs and rural development; RHEs and quality of life; and social RHEs.
Research limitations/implications
Future research avenues were identified and suggestions for further research on RHEs were provided.
Practical implications
The paper provides insights into how rural areas can attract health enterprises and how health enterprises can operate in rural areas.
Originality/value
This research expands on the limited existing knowledge of RHEs and sets the foundations for further research.
Details
Keywords
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of…
Abstract
In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.
Details
Keywords
The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and…
Abstract
The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.