Graham Manville

Questioning the Legitimacy of Social Enterprises through Gramscian and Bourdieusian Perspectives: The Case of British Social Enterprises

Abstract Drawing on data from six social enterprises in the UK, this paper demonstrates that social enterprises negotiate their legitimacy borrowing from the state, the corporation and the service logics. The paper illustrates the existential crises of legitimacy as experienced in the social enterprise sector. The utility of a principled ethical approach is discussed as a way forward. The paper also outlines challenges that social enterprises face when adopting an ethical approach. Theoretical tools of Gramsci and Bourdieu are mobilized in the paper in order to render visible the often implicit and questioned structures of hegemonic power that shape the habitus of legitimacy in social enterprises.

Examining the influence of servant and entrepreneurial leadership on the work outcomes of employees in social enterprises

Abstract The present study examines the relative influence of two distinct leadership styles, servant leadership and entrepreneurial leadership, on the organizational commitment and innovative behavior of employees working in social enterprises. Analyzing data from 169 employees and 42 social entrepreneurs, we found that, although servant leadership was positively related to followers’ organizational commitment, the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and organizational commitment was insignificant. In contrast, whilst we found evidence that entrepreneurial leadership was positively related to followers’ innovative behavior, the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ innovative behavior was insignificant. Our research contributes to the underdeveloped literature on leadership in social enterprises by exploring the relative effectiveness of different leadership styles (namely an entrepreneurial leadership style and a servant leadership style) in promoting follower work attitudes and behaviors in social enterprises. In addition, our research demonstrates the importance of leadership over and above followers’ individual differences such as pro-social motivation and creative self-efficacy.

Social entrepreneurship education: a reflexive approach through the prism of capitals

Despite the growing interest in the field of social entrepreneurship education, this sub-field remains under-theorised. In this paper we demonstrate the value of engaging with Bourdieu’s theory of capitals in examining the social entrepreneurship education sub- field and generate empirical insights to the subject by illuminating the interrelationships between the disciplinary roots, key pillars of education programmes and associated pedagogical content and strategies. Drawing on the above, we offer a ‘reflexive’ approach to the study of social entrepreneurship education, which acknowledges the importance of learning processes involved in developing multiple forms of capital and transforming them to each other in the pursuit of educational goals . This reflexive framework has implications for future inter-disciplinary research and social entrepreneurship education practice.