Social enterprises - real businesses that trade for a social purpose - are a growing phenomena with an increasing role to play in society, but there is widespread confusion and controversy over the definition of the term.
This exciting book includes nearly forty interviews with the most influential and experienced social enterprise practitioners, supporters, thinkers and policy makers. In their own words, they discuss their organisations, values and world-changing goals, providing fresh clarity and understanding on the real value of social enterprises.
Jargon-free, the book delivers a lively and clear introduction as to what social enterprises are, how they can change individual lives and, by challenging assumptions, may even offer new directions for the future of capitalism. It is a unique guide for aspiring practitioners, students, researchers and public sector staff.
Introduction This chapter explores the discourses of enterprise, uncovering the investment in this notion at EU, national and local levels of policy as a solution to youth unemployment. We present two different interventions on the South Coast that aim to increase youth enterprise. These schemes articulate resonating, but significantly different, discourses of enterprise and entrepreneurs. Risk and failure are closely embedded in both discourses of enterprise, but the two interventions have a very different understanding of the value of these in relation to
Shifts to independent delivery of health and social care services have led to increased numbers of micro-enterprises. Could these tiny organisations with just 5 or fewer employees be the best way of delivering cost-effective health and social care services in the context of decreased budgets and increased demands? What size is ‘just right’ for a care provider?
This book explores size as an independent variable in care services, comparing outcomes and value for money across micro, small, medium and large organisations. Using interviews and surveys with 108 people using services and carers in 27 case-study organisations it focuses on the contribution micro-enterprises can make to the care sector.
143 FOUR enterprise and entrepreneurship introduction This chapter considers the role that enterprise and entrepreneurship can play in renewing neighbourhoods as well as reviewing the various kinds of policy intervention that have sought to stimulate enterprise in deprived neighbourhoods. Of the three different rationales that were put forward in Chapter Two for policy intervention in deprived areas, both strengthening economic competitiveness and the pursuit of social inclusion currently feature prominently in the discourse concerning the importance of
31 THREE Enterprise and care Since the 1990s there have been far-reaching reforms to public services in England, resulting in less direct state provision of public service and an increased marketisation of the public sector through the outsourcing of services to a range of competing providers (McKay et al, 2011; Hazenberg and Hall, 2014). This commitment to a diversity of welfare provision has fostered a ‘mixed economy of welfare’, increasing the role of the third and private sectors as providers of public services (Powell, 2007). This chapter considers
1 ONE Introduction: social enterprises today Introducing social enterprises and this book Twenty years ago, if you had asked most people what a social enterprise was, they would have had no idea what you were talking about. Maybe, after some thought, they would have had a vague notion that it is a business that does ‘good things’. That is probably as far as you would have got. While it is still not a term that is used in general conversation, we have at least reached the stage where social enterprises can be mentioned on Radio 4 or the broadsheet
143 NINE How micro-enterprise performs This chapter focuses on explaining why micro-enterprises are able to perform well on the four measures we used in the study. We begin by revisiting the hypotheses set out in Chapter Three, and consider them in the context of the evidence presented in Chapters Six, Seven and Eight. We then focus on explaining why it is that micro- enterprises perform better than larger organisations. Part of this relates to organisational structures, with very small organisations being more flexible and informal than larger ones
39 5 Encouraging enterprise and decentralisation Stephen O’Brien Stephen O’Brien MP (Eddisburg, Cheshire), formerly Shadow Paymaster General and Secretary to the Treasury, is currently the Shadow Secretary of State for Industry. Born in Tanzania, he is Chair of the all-party British Tanzania Group, Vice Chair of the all-party Heavily-Indebted Poor Countries Group and of the all-party Uganda Group, and an executive committee member of the all-party Africa Group. Before becoming an MP in 1999, having first practised in the City of London as a solicitor, for 10
71 EIGHT The financing of social enterprise Wray Irwin Introduction Over the last 20 years there has been a growing interest in the area of social entrepreneurship, and we have seen the emergence of social enterprises as organisations that use commercial trading methods to create social value. These organisations are seen as providing solutions to social and environmental problems across the globe. For much of that time the debate has been around defining a social enterprise in a way that enables an understanding of what makes it different from other
83 NINE Financial planning for social enterprises Andrew Ferguson Very few people become social entrepreneurs with the ambition of managing money; although as earlier chapters have made clear, the generation of funds to assure sustainability and growth is one of the defining features of the social enterprise. While money is not the end objective of a social enterprise it is always worth bearing in mind that nothing very much can happen without it and therefore its careful management is essential to securing the wider objectives of the enterprise. This
