Simon Teasdale

What's in a Name? Making Sense of Social Enterprise Discourses

Much attention has been paid to the contested concept of “social enterprise”. A wide variety of organisational types have had the label attributed to them or have tried to claim the label for themselves. Existing academic literature provides a bewildering array of definitions and explanations for the emergence of social enterprise. This conceptual confusion is because social enterprise is a fluid and contested concept constructed by different actors promoting different discourses connected to different organisational forms and drawing upon different academic theories. This article makes sense of these different social enterprise forms, academic explanations and policy and practitioner discourses. Using the example of England, where social enterprise has been heavily promoted and supported as a site for policy intervention, an analysis of how the meanings of social enterprise have evolved and expanded over time is provided. This demonstrates that the language of social enterprise was initially developed as a way of promoting co-operative and mutual models of public and private enterprise. Its meaning expanded as other actors adopted the language to compete for policy attention and resources. Policy makers deliberately kept the definition loose to allow for the inclusion of almost any organisation claiming to be a social enterprise. This allowed them to amalgamate the positive characteristics of the different organisational forms, and so claim to be addressing a wide range of social problems using social enterprise as a policy tool.

How Can Social Enterprise Address Disadvantage? Evidence from an Inner City Community

This article examines the potential impact of social enterprise on disadvantage. The case study research involved participant observation over a 2-year period. Selection of cases was based on a preliminary typology for social enterprise and disadvantage was conceptualized using the European concept of social exclusion. This sees exclusion as multidimensional and relative to the standards of the society in which a person lives. The existing research literature suggests that the aggregate economic impact of social enterprise upon exclusion is marginal. This is a consequence of a mismatch between policy expectations and what is happening in the field. This study found that different forms of social enterprise impacted on exclusion in different ways. This article outlines these different impacts in order to open up a more balanced perspective on the potential and limitation of social enterprise in combating disadvantage.

Playing with Numbers: A Methodological Critique of the Social Enterprise Growth Myth

Abstract Social enterprise is a contested concept which has become a site for policy intervention in many countries. In the UK the government has invested significant resources into social enterprise infrastructure, partly to increase the capacity of social enterprises to deliver or replace public services. Government publications show the number of social enterprises to have increased from 5,300 to 62,000 over a five-year period. This paper explores the myth of social enterprise growth in the UK through a methodological critique of the four government data sources used to construct and legitimise this myth. Particular attention is paid to how political decisions influence the construction of evidence. We find that growth is mainly attributable to political decisions to reinterpret key elements of the social enterprise definition and to include new organisational types in sampling frames.

Negotiating Tensions: How Do Social Enterprises in the Homelessness Field Balance Social and Commercial Considerations?

Social enterprise is presented as a potential policy solution to homelessness, particularly as regards the employment of homeless people. This policy focus relies on an assumption that social and commercial goals can be successfully combined. This implies that by pursuing profit-maximizing behaviour social enterprises can also maximize social benefits. However, this paper shows that social enterprises are hybrid organizations facing a trade-off between social and commercial considerations. The paper identifies strategies used by work integration social enterprises in the homelessness field to balance mission-related goals with financial sustainability. The six case study organizations drew upon a hybrid range of economic resources transferred from other sectors of the economy. This enabled them to compete with private sector organizations, by effectively transferring the additional cost of employing homeless people from the social enterprise to consumers, government, philanthropic donors, and other organizations providing social support to homeless people.

Legislating for the big society? The case of the Public Services (Social V alue) Bill

A key aspect of the ‘big society’ discourse in England is an enhanced role for voluntary organizations in the delivery of public services. However , Conservative philosophy draws upon the contradictory positions of market liberals favouring the free market and a small state, and those favouring community self-help and local distinctiveness. This article explores how these tensions were played out in parliamentary debate over the second reading of the Public Services (Social V alue) Bill. The authors argue that these tensions reflect unresolved issues within the UK Conservative party, and that market liberals will have the upper hand.

Models of social enterprise in the homelessness field

Purpose – There is much current policy and practitioner enthusiasm for using social enterprise to tackle the problems faced by homeless people. However, there is no evidence base to support (or negate) this policy focus. The purpose of this paper is to identify the different ways in which social enterprise responds to the needs of homeless people, and some of the challenges faced by social enterprises in the homelessness field.Design/methodology/approach – Desk‐based research of the grey literature identified different models of social enterprise in the homelessness field. A review of the two sets of literature on homelessness and social enterprise was conducted to identify the implications of these models for homeless people.Findings – Six models of social enterprise in the homelessness field are identified. Social enterprise involves balancing social and economic objectives. As third sector organisations become more business focused, there is a risk that those homeless people with the most complex or ac...

The tactical mimicry of social enterprise strategies: Acting ‘as if’ in the everyday life of third sector organizations

Using England as a paradigmatic case of the ‘enterprising up’ of the third sector through social enterprise policies and programs, this article sheds light on practitioners’ resistance as enacted through dramaturgical identification with government strategies. Drawing from a longitudinal qualitative research study, which is interpreted via Michel de Certeau’s theory of the prosaic of the everyday, we present the case study of Teak, a charitable regeneration company, to illustrate how its Chief Executive Liam ‘acted as’ a social entrepreneur in order to gain access to important resources. Specifically, we establish ‘tactical mimicry’ as a sensitizing concept to suggest that third sector practitioners’ public identification with the normative premises of ‘social enterprise’ is part of a parasitical engagement with governmental power geared toward appropriating public money. While tactical mimicry conforms to governmental strategies only in order to exploit them, its ultimate aim is to increase potential for collective agency outside the direct influence of power. The contribution we make is threefold: first, we extend the recent debate on ‘productive resistance’ by highlighting how ‘playing the game’ without changing existing relations of power can nevertheless produce largely favorable outcomes. Second, we suggest that recognition of the potentiality of tactical mimicry requires methodologies that pay attention to the spatial and temporal dynamics of resistance. Finally, we argue that explaining the normalizing power of ‘social enterprise’ without consideration of the non-discursive, mainly financial resources made available to those who identify with it, necessarily risks overlooking a crucial element of the dramaturgical dynamic of discourse.

How Social Innovation ‘Came to Be’: Tracing the Evolution of a Contested Concept

Social innovation is a contested concept with multiple meanings that have implications beyond academia. It is not a new term – its sociological heritage can be dated to the late nineteenth century. However, until the twenty-first century the concept was sparsely utilised, and, despite its current popularity among policy makers in Europe and the United States, remains largely ignored by social policy researchers. Through bibliometric analysis we identify the most influential articles on social innovation and explore how these have conceptualised the term. We show that over time social innovation has taken on a set of meanings far removed from its sociological roots. In particular we identify a weak tradition that sees social innovation as any increase in aggregate individual utility arising from an innovation, and a strong tradition that focuses on the process of collaboration between different groups and the restructuring of power relations. We conclude by outlining implications for social policy research.

Associative democracy and the social economy: exploring the regulatory challenge

Abstract The current political climate in the UK is arguably more conducive to associationalism than previous regimes. This paper engages with Paul Hirsts work, focusing in particular on the legal and regulatory conditions that would need to be in place to support a transition towards associative democracy. The social economy is the obvious vehicle for associational reform. However, an analysis of the legal and regulatory forms associated with the social economy in the UK indicates that the current framework will not easily facilitate transition. The analysis opens up challenging questions for how to regulate the democratic element of associative democracy.

Whose failure? Learning from the financial collapse of a social enterprise in 'Steeltown'

Abstract The social enterprise literature is dominated by stories of good practice and heroic achievement. Failure has not been widely researched. The limited policy and practice literature presents failure as the flipside of good practice. Explanations for failure are almost wholly individualistic, and related to poor governance. However, organisational studies literature shows that failure cannot be understood without reference to the wider environment within which organisations operate. This paper is based on a nine year in depth case-study of an organisation previously characterised in the policy and practitioner literature as an example of good practice and heroic achievement. We seek to explain its ‘failure’ through studying the interaction between the organisation and its wider environment. We show that simple individualistic explanations are not sufficient by which to understand social enterprise failure and outline the implications for academic understanding of social enterprise.