Roger Spear

Social entrepreneurship: a different model?

Purpose – This paper is concerned with developing a framework which allows both economic and social entrepreneurship to be analysed. Design/methodology/approach – The framework is developed to accommodate the often neglected collective or pluralistic dimension of entrepreneurship. It draws on the behavioural approach to adopt a straightforward definition of social entrepreneurship – focusing on the creation of a social enterprise (co-operative, mutual or voluntary organisation). The paper is exploratory, developing a conceptual framework, based on some case studies of social enterprises in a range of business sectors, in the UK. Findings – The findings from this small scale study provide interesting models of entrepreneurship that contrast with conventional models for SMEs. Research limitations/implications – The research has implications for research on conventional entrepreneurship, as well as creating a basis for developing the new field of social entrepreneurship. Practical implications – The paper provides policy implications for more effective support of social entrepreneurship. Originality/value – The paper establishes the importance of some distinctive factors in social entrepreneurship for policy and further research.

The Governance Challenges of Social Enterprises: Evidence from a UK Empirical Study

The social enterprise sector in the UK is going through a period of rapid growth, and is being seen by government as another important vehicle for delivering public services. As a result the issue of public trust in social enterprise is of growing importance. While there is a growing literature on the governance of voluntary and non-profit organizations, with some exceptions (e.g. co-operatives) there has been little research on the governance challenges and support needs of social enterprises. The research reported here aimed to help fill that gap. Based on interviews and focus groups with governance advisers, board members and chief executives it explores the typical governance challenges faced by social enterprises. Based on the research the paper develops a new, empirically-grounded typology of social enterprises based on their origins and development path, and presents findings about some of the governance challenges that are common across the sector and some that are more distinctive to the different types of social enterprise.

Tackling social exclusion in Europe : the contribution of the social economy

This book is the result of an international study by leading economists and sociologists from across Europe and North America. The response of the new social economy (primarily voluntary and co-operative sectors) to social exclusion and employability in the context of crises of unemployment and the welfare state is of wide international concern. This book looks specifically at the growth of enterprises and initiatives whose primary aim is the integration of unemployed and disadvantaged people into work. A common framework has been used in each of the country studies, thus allowing an interesting international comparative perspective to be developed. There is considerable interest in how the third sector is changing internationally in response to rapidly changing work and welfare systems. By distilling international experience this book makes an important contribution to debates about new ways of addressing the central issues of unemployment and social exclusion of disadvantaged people in society.

The Role of Social Enterprise in European Labour Markets

This paper covers the findings of a study of social enterprise providing work integration in 12 European countries. It is specifically concerned with the different types of social enterprise for integration (SEI), also known as work integration social enterprise (WISE). The study has identified and described their main characteristics as social enterprises, the type of work integration they provide, their numbers, and how they have developed and are supported. One outcome of the project is the development of a database on WISE in Europe, accessible on internet.

The Dark side of the moon - unilluminated dimensions of systems practice

This paper explores some of the unilluminated or less explicit aspects of issues faced by those using systems approaches in real-world problem situations. The paper contends that discourse on systems approaches tends to be dominated by rational logical aspects of methodology, though other aspects of the intervention process, such as political dimensions of legitimacy, have become more important in the last 10–15 years. Unsurprisingly the discourse has been different for different methods. Method has been largely invisible in the hard systems area (or at least relatively little discussed), and although it has been the subject of much debate in the soft systems area, the debate has been nonetheless narrowly defined. It is narrowly defined in its relative neglect of process aspects for conducting a systems study. Since the nature of these processes (for example, the client/consultant relation) changes from hard systems to soft systems to critical systems in a way that makes social process progressively a more important dimension of each approach, this aspect has featured more in discourse on critical systems, but in general it remains a curious area of neglect. There is increasing interest in this area, and some signs that relevant theory and practice from closely related domains is being accessed to strengthen these approaches. This paper attempts to make a contribution by outlining and discussing some areas that could usefully complement existing systems approaches. The paper considers the following areas: (a) client relations, (b) analyst role, (c) language and communication, (d) group processes, (e) culture (and rationalities), (f) information gathering techniques and processes, and (g) change management or implementation. The paper draws on experiences of systems practices in the literature, interviews with systems practitioners, and writings in related areas. The paper ends by discussing some of the implications of these issues for the development of well-rounded systems approaches.

The Rise and Fall of Employee-Owned UK Bus Companies

Privatization of the UK municipal bus services during the early 1990s led to a substantial part of the bus sector having high levels of employee owners. This provided interesting sites for exploring many features of financial and organizational participation in these companies. A subsequent cycle of economic concentration led to a wave of mergers and takeovers, and the demise of many of these employee-owned organizations as independent entities, though high levels of employee ownership persist in some of the four companies that now dominate the sector. Drawing mainly on secondary sources (especially the extensive study by Pendleton et al. at Bradford University), this article shows how the form of employee ownership developed by key actors at the formation stage succeeds in resolving many of the trade union and management concerns arising from previous examples of substantial employee ownership, and identified in previous research. However, the demise of most independent employee-owned companies has raised theoretical and strategic issues of their viability during periods of economic concentration.

Religion and Social Entrepreneurship

This chapter is concerned with the role of religion in social entrepreneurship. It takes an institutional perspective and examines the way religious institutions and actors have supported social entrepreneurship. Max Weber has argued for the role of (Protestant) religion in motivating people to take entrepreneurial activity, leading to the rise of capitalism in the West. It has often been observed that religious groups, especially sects or minority religious groups such as Quakers or Jews, have strong links with entrepreneurial activity—there are a range of factors in the literature which help us explain this. These include in particular the place of high trust networks in facilitating entrepreneurial activity. In addition, religious institutions (through leadership discourse and institutional networks) have historically played important roles in shaping the activities of religious members and priests as well as philanthropists. This has operated through religious leadership discourse, for example papal encyclicals orienting priests to support economic solutions to poverty and social problems in their communities, and the direct action of individual priests, institutional development (networks/organizations) and local religious leaders to catalyse entrepreneurial activity. Thus these three dimensions of religious institutions (ideological discourse, networks and leadership) will be examined in relation to social entrepreneurship.

“Underneath the iceberg” — Challenges to the process of operational research (OR)/systems from alternative practice

Conventional OR/systems practice, it is argued in this paper, is based upon assumptions which make it unsuitable for guiding interventions in nontraditional organizations. Any methodology or method rests upon a social theory,upon craft knowledge, and upon a theory of how change can and should be brought about. Conventional OR/systems is not explicit about any of these matters. Reflecting on why conventional methods often fail to work with nontraditional organizations, however, enables us to get beneath “the iceberg” and unearth what is being taken for granted. It is then obvious that the nature of many organizations in the social economy requires a different type of practice. Soft OR/systems is a response to the failings of the traditional approach, but goes only some way toward meeting the criticisms.