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Prelims

Shaping Social Enterprise

ISBN: 978-1-78714-251-0, eISBN: 978-1-78714-250-3

Publication date: 31 March 2017

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(2017), "Prelims", Kerlin, J.A. (Ed.) Shaping Social Enterprise, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. i-xxiii. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78714-250-320171012

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited

Half Title Page

Shaping Social Enterprise

Understanding Institutional Context and Influence

Dedication

For Annalise, Sarah, and Daniel

Title Page

Shaping Social Enterprise

Understanding Institutional Context and Influence

Edited by

Janelle A. Kerlin

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2017

Copyright © 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78714-251-0 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-250-3 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-631-0 (Epub)

List of Figures

Chapter 1
Figure 1 Macro-Institutional Processes and Causal Paths for Models of Social Enterprise (Original).
Chapter 2
Figure 1 Alter’s Typology of Social Enterprises.
Chapter 3
Figure 1 Accumulated Number of Active Certified Social Enterprises.
Figure 2 Number of Newly Registered and Surviving Social Enterprises from Respective Year.
Figure 3 Macro-Institutional Processes and Causal Paths for Models of Social Enterprise.
Figure 4 South Korean Government’s Intent and Its Intended Causal Path.
Chapter 4
Figure 1 Growth and Trends of Social Enterprise Related Organizations.
Figure 2 Diffusion of Innovation by NPI.
Figure 3 Diffusion of Innovation by the British Council.
Figure 4 Social Entrepreneur Program by the British Council.
Chapter 7
Figure 1 Dynamics of Convergence and Emergence on Social Enterprises in Chile.
Chapter 8
Figure 1 The Third Sector and the Welfare Mix: Illustration of Current Shifts in Swedish Policies.
Figure 2 Different Versions of Social Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprises.
Chapter 9
Figure 1 Type of Resources Accessed.
Chapter 11
Figure 1 A Revised Macro-Institutional Social Enterprise Framework.

List of Tables

Chapter 1
Table 1 Global Competitiveness Report’s Criteria for Stages of Economic Development.
Table 2 Salamon and Sokolowski’s Models of Civil Society Sector Structure.
Table 3 Original Country Models of Social Enterprise.
Table 4 Macro-Institutions in Five Countries and Associated Social Enterprise Country Models.
Table 5 Social Enterprise Characteristics for Five Countries and Associated Social Enterprise Country Models.
Chapter 2
Table 1 Informal Institutional Fixed-Effect Models.
Table 2 Reduced Model with Institutional Variables Predicting Social Enterprise.
Chapter 3
Table 1 Socioeconomic Data for Countries Including South Korea.
Table 2 Social Enterprise Characteristics for Countries Including South Korea.
Table 3 Models of Social Enterprises and Mapping of the South Korean Case.
Chapter 4
Table 1 Socioeconomic Data for Seven Countries.
Table 2 Main NPI Programs 2006–2012.
Table 3 Social Enterprise Country Models and Mapping of the China Model.
Table 4 Characteristics of Social Enterprise in China.
Chapter 5
Table 1 Socioeconomic Indicators for Central and Eastern European Countries (2010).
Table 2 Social Economy Actors in Romania – Number, Surplus/Profit, Employees in 2010.
Table 3 Economic Indicators for NGOs.
Table 4 Economic Indicators for Mutual Aid Associations.
Table 5 Economic Indicators for Cooperatives.
Chapter 6
Table 1 RCI 2013 Scores for Spanish Regions.
Table 2 Dimensions of the Civil Society Sector in Spain.
Table 3 Social Economy Entities in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
Table 4 Social Enterprise Characteristics for Spain.
Chapter 7
Table 1 Civil Societies with Liberal Patterns.
Table 2 Institutional Context of Chile for the Emergence of Social Enterprises in 2010.
Table 3 The ABC Approach for Social Enterprises in Chile.
Chapter 9
Table 1 Criteria for Regional Sampling of Case Study Regions.
Table 2 Social and Economic Information on Zambia.
Table 3 Sector of the Organization.
Table 4 Year of Establishment.
Table 5 Mission of Organization.
Chapter 10
Table 1 Social Enterprise Characteristics for Australia.
Table 2 Socioeconomic Data for Australia.
Table 3 Sources for Textual Analysis.
Chapter 11
Table 1 Overview of Country Models of Social Enterprise Revised.

About the Authors

Jo Barraket is the Director of the Centre for Social Impact and Professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Her research interests include social enterprise, social innovation, and the role of the social economy in new public governance.

Rosemary Chilufya, originally from Zambia, is currently a doctoral student at the University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom, and a Special Research Fellow at the Copperbelt University in Zambia. Her research interests center around human security, regional development, and social entrepreneurship.

Muhammet Emre Coskun is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University, USA. He conducts quantitative research on international NGOs and their poverty impact as well as on institutions and social enterprise.

Tracy Shicun Cui, originally from China, is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University, USA. Her research focuses on nonprofit finance and social enterprise in China.

Ramon Fisac-Garcia is Assistant Professor in the Business Administration Department at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid in Spain. He conducts research on organizational analysis, performance improvement, and impact assessments of social enterprises.

Sebastian Gatica is Adjunct Assistant Professor and Director of The Social Innovation Lab in the School of Management at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He was an Ashoka Fellow and advisor to the Chilean Fourth Sector Enterprise Commission.

Malin Gawell is Associated Professor at SÖdertÖrn University in Stockholm, Sweden. Her primary research interests are in social and societal entrepreneurship, social enterprise and civil society. Her research relates to individuals, organization as well as policy levels.

Bokgyo Jeong, originally from South Korea, received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently an Assistant Professor at Kean University in New Jersey, USA. His research interests include nonprofit management, social enterprise/economy, international development, and collaboration between international organizations and NGOs.

Janelle A. Kerlin is Associate Professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University, USA. Her research interests include comparative social enterprise, nonprofit commercial revenue, and international NGOs. She is an associate editor for the Social Enterprise Journal.

Mihaela Lambru, PhD, is Professor in the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest, Romania. Her research focuses on the development of the third sector, social enterprise, and worker cooperatives in Romania and Eastern and Central Europe.

Chris Mason, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Social Impact at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. His research interests include social enterprise, policy development, discourse, identity, and corporate social responsibility. He is an associate editor of the Social Enterprise Journal.

Thema Monroe-White is the Director of Research and Evaluation at VentureWell, Atlanta, USA, where she initiates and oversees research and evaluation in support of programs, grant proposals, and thought leadership initiatives. She holds a PhD in Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.

Ana Moreno-Romero is Associate Professor in the Industrial Organization Department at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid in Spain. Her research examines the organization of work, human resources, corporate social responsibility, and networked organizations.

Alex Nicholls is Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at the Said Business School, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. His research interests include a range of topics within social entrepreneurship and social innovation. He is editor of the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.

Claudia Petrescu, PhD, is a principal researcher in The Research Institute for Quality of Life at the Romanian Academy of Science, Romania. Her research examines community development, the social economy, the third sector, and social enterprise in Romania.

Acknowledgments

Numerous people have participated in the development of this volume both directly and indirectly over the course of several years. What started as a conversation with Sebastian Gatica from Chile at the EMES social enterprise conference in Europe evolved over time into a book idea that took on a life of its own. At that same conference, I met Claudia Petrescu and Mihaela Lambru who expressed an immediate interest in providing the Romanian experience with institutions and the development of social enterprise. Bokgyo Jeong was also eager to discuss how the South Korean case leant itself to a different model for social enterprise, a discussion which he evolved into the in-depth paper on the topic found in this volume.

Along the way Bob Doherty, editor of the Social Enterprise Journal, was gracious enough to support a special issue of the journal devoted to critiquing the Macro-Institutional Social Enterprise (MISE) framework I had developed. The issue brought the first five papers into the project, versions of which are in this volume. The special issue was published in August 2015 and included four papers that were chosen as a result of a call for papers. Through this process, papers on Chile by Gatica and South Korea by Jeong were published as well as a paper on Spain by Ramon Fisac-Garcia and Ana Moreno-Romero and another on Australia by Chris Mason and Jo Barraket. The fifth paper in the special issue was provided by Thema Monroe-White with the help of myself and Sandy Zook my graduate research assistant. Monroe-White had tested the MISE framework in multi-level regression analysis as a part of her dissertation and was willing to publish the results for the first time in the special issue.

The call brought in more papers than could be published in the special issue and thus the book includes both the five papers from the issue as well as papers on Romania by Lambru and Petrescu and Sweden by Malin Gawell who had also expressed interest. The book also contains two chapters led by PhD students with my assistance. I met Rosemary Chilufya from Zambia at the International Social Innovation Research conference in the United Kingdom, where the papers from the special issue were presented. At about the same time, Tracy Shicun Cui from China came along as my research assistant and graduate student to delve into the subject in her home country.

Also newly published here is a paper in large part undertaken by Muhammet Emre Coskun that updates the work of Monroe-White. He is also my research assistant and a graduate student in my department. He has my gratitude for the many hours he devoted to setting up and running the multi-level regression analysis needed to capture elements not included in the first version. I am also grateful to Alex Nicholls who showed interest in the book project from the start and was gracious enough to provide the preface.

It goes without saying that those who reviewed papers for the special issue of the Social Enterprise Journal as well as those who provided editing of final drafts for the book are much appreciated. In particular, my Department of Public Management and Policy at Georgia State University provided financial support for the many hours of graduate research assistance. My special thanks goes to Emerald Press for their support through both the publication of the special issue of the Social Enterprise Journal as well as this volume. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my husband who was supportive throughout the process especially with his help of our three children.

Preface

Although the phenomenon is anything but new, scholarly enquiry into social entrepreneurship and social enterprise began in earnest in the early 2000s (Nicholls, 2006). From the beginning, the field was framed as an international, indeed global, set of activities addressing a wide range of social issues across many different contexts (Bornstein, 2004). Several important – international – support networks evolved during this period too aiming at building networks of social entrepreneurs, linking them to supportive institutions and resources, and celebrating their work. Ashoka, the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, and the Skoll Foundation all aimed to have a global reach focused, first, on developing countries and, subsequently, also embracing social entrepreneurship/enterprise in the rich, developed nations (see Nicholls, 2010). This important work was often organized regionally or via country-specific organizational structures. However, despite this, there has been relatively little work done on examining the contextual nuances and comparative institutions of social entrepreneurship/social enterprise within and across countries.

Partly, this has been a legacy of a fundamental assumption that was made early on in the evolution of the study of social entrepreneurship/social enterprise – namely, that the key, determining, variable of its impact, success and distinctiveness lay in it representing a new form of entrepreneurship. As a consequence, academic centers and initiatives designed to study, teach, and popularize social entrepreneurship/social enterprise emerged in business schools around the world – a setting thought to be best suited to research entrepreneurship. However, over time the assumption that entrepreneurship was the key differentiator of social entrepreneurship/social enterprise has been increasingly challenged and it is now as common to find scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers exploring the meanings and implications of the social in this emergent field. One aspect of this new line of research has been a greater focus on contexts, eco-systems, and institutions (Bloom & Chatterji, 2009).

But, what is meant by the social here? Of course, this is a slippery and potentially all-encompassing term that can disappear up its own ontology. However, research suggests that for social entrepreneurship/social enterprise, at least, the social refers to distinctive (intended) outcomes and processes developed to address intransigent or systemic failures in the provision of welfare goods and services and, in some cases, of basic economic development. This means that social entrepreneurship/social enterprise can best be understood as outcome and process innovation addressing social market failures (Mair, Martí & Ventresca, 2012).

The types of innovation developed by social entrepreneurs vary considerably from macro-level, disruptive examples (micro-finance, Fair Trade) that are, in fact, quite rare to more modest, meso- and micro-level, action that focuses on sector-specific issues (low cost solar energy, mobile ante-natal clinics, subsidized cataract surgeries). In the latter case, innovation is often a consequence of developing organizational hybridity – the blending together of logics, discourses, and practices from the third sector, government, and the commercial market – as strategic action. Such hybridity-as-strategy can allow new insights into key social problems that, in turn, can drive new solutions that are not open to the status quo of siloed, sectoral action (Battilana & Dorado, 2010). When hybridity focuses on addressing the effects of unjust or inequitable social relations, then such activity has become known as social innovation – a more systemic and structural set of actions that serves to frame, but only rarely represent, the more grass-roots work of most social entrepreneurs (Nicholls & Murdock, 2011; Nicholls & Ziegler, 2015).

So how can the social within social entrepreneurship/social enterprise be best understood and analyzed? As was noted above, it has been increasingly recognized that the social in this field is contingent and contextual – differing in its boundaries and defining features in different cultural, economic, and geographic settings. One important example of this can been seen in the development of a coordinated policy response – across governments – to develop the social impact investing market (see Nicholls, Emerson & Paton, 2015). Pioneered by the UK government in the 2000s, the value of a policy agenda for social impact investing across nations was established in July 2013 at a meeting hosted by the government in London during the G8 Summit chaired by the United Kingdom. One key outcome was the establishment of a Social Impact Investment Taskforce comprising the G8 countries minus Russia and with Australia included. This Taskforce worked for a year on building a common set of policy objectives across its member states whilst always recognizing significant local differences in policy implementation. The Taskforce reported back on a raft of issues in 2014 and was considered sufficiently successful to be followed up with a larger Global Social Impact Investment Taskforce encompassing more of the G20 countries and others in 2015/2016.

In late 2016, the World Economic Forum published the results of survey data exploring the Top 10 best countries in which to develop and practice social entrepreneurship (WEF, 2016). This research provided an interesting example of comparative country analysis in this field. The data were extracted from a survey conducted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in 45 of the world’s biggest economies as ranked by the World Bank. Each of the country surveys contacted 20 experts focused on social entrepreneurship, including academics, social entrepreneurs, investors, policy-makers, and support network staff. In total, 880 experts were surveyed with 619 responses – of the respondents, 48 percent were women. The questions asked explored the funding, policy support, market development, and access to talent for social entrepreneurship/social enterprise in each country. The survey analysis concluded that the United States was the “best” country for social entrepreneurship followed by Canada and the United Kingdom. However, the research did not attempt to explain why country contexts differed nor how they could be changed better to suit the development of social entrepreneurship/social enterprise.

In the light of these praxis-focused examples, scholarly work on the comparative country contexts of social entrepreneurship/enterprise has been surprisingly limited to date. However, it is in the context of this considerable research gap that the work of Professor Kerlin fits. Kerlin pioneered comparative regional analysis of social enterprise when she edited her groundbreaking book Social Enterprise: A Global Comparison in 2009. This widely cited collection built upon an important body of research papers already published by Kerlin (2006) and quickly established itself as the first and most authoritative book on this subject. Central to the research was the development of a Macro-Institutional Social Enterprise (MISE) Framework that considered the roles of cultural, government, economic, and civil society factors – and their inter-relationships – as contextual drivers of diversity in the development of social enterprise in different countries and regions. The research applied the MISE Framework to establish a series of country/regional models of social enterprise built upon distinctive articulations of the same, key, institutional factors. The collection considered eight contexts: Western Europe, East Central Europe, South East Asia, the United States, Zimbabwe and Zambia, Argentina and Japan.

The new book presented here builds upon the legacy of Kerlin’s (2009) work to review and revise the MISE Framework and extend the country analysis to seven new territories: South Korea, China, Romania, Spain, Chile, Sweden, and Australia. In addition, the work on Zambia that was begun in the 2009 volume is revisited and revised here. This new research tests Kerlin’s theoretically and empirically grounded framework systematically to look at how informal and formal macro-institutions and micro-level stakeholders together shape social enterprise country models. There is a greater emphasis here on culture as an informal institution than in the 2009 work. Moreover, the country models have been enhanced with two new types based on Asian country analysis. Overall, this new book acknowledges the role of micro-level actors more fully than before. As a consequence, this work represents a significant step forward in helping frame how to analyze and understand the evidenced empirical reality of the many divergent manifestations of social enterprise globally. This work has important implications for the future institutionalization of social entrepreneurship/social enterprise globally as its provides vital guidance to policy-makers, potential funders, and aspiring social entrepreneurs in terms of how best to address “wicked problems” in complex contexts. Professor Kerlin’s work also provides rich material for further academic research and study.

The phenomenon of social entrepreneurship/social enterprise is increasingly recognized as offering an important contribution to wider attempts at addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (British Council, 2016; UNDP, 2016). In order for social entrepreneurship/social enterprise to fulfill its promise in improving the lives of millions, its adaptability and contextual flexibility needs to be understood, codified, and institutionalized. This book represents an important contribution to this endeavor.

Alex Nicholls

Professor of Social Entrepreneurship

Said Business School

University of Oxford

References

Battilana & Dorado (2010) Battilana, J. , & Dorado, S. (2010). Building sustainable hybrid organizations: The case of commercial microfinance organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 53(6), 1419–1440.

Bloom & Chatterji (2009) Bloom, P. , & Chatterji, A. (2009). Scaling social entrepreneurial impact. California Management Review, 51(3), 114–133.

Bornstein (2004) Bornstein, D. (2004). How to change the world: Social entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

British Council (2016) British Council . (2016). Social enterprises step up to tackle the SDGs. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/society/social-enterprise/news-events/news-social-enterprises-tackle-SDGs. Accessed on September 30, 2016.

Kerlin (2006) Kerlin, J. A. (2006). Social enterprise in the United States and Europe: Understanding and learning from the differences. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 17(3), 246–262.

Kerlin (2009) Kerlin, J. A. (2009). Social enterprise: A global comparison. Lebanon, NH: Tufts University Press.

Mair, Martí, & Ventresca (2012) Mair, J. , Martí, I. , & Ventresca, M. (2012). Building inclusive markets in rural Bangladesh: How intermediaries work institutional voids. Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), 819–850.

Nicholls (2006) Nicholls, A. (Ed.). (2006). Social entrepreneurship: New models of sustainable social change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nicholls (2010) Nicholls, A. (2010). The legitimacy of social entrepreneurship: Reflexive isomorphism in a pre-paradigmatic field. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 34(4), 611–633.

Nicholls, Emerson, & Paton (2015) Nicholls, A. , Emerson, J. , & Paton, R. (2015). Social Finance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nicholls & Murdock (2011) Nicholls, A. , & Murdock, A. (Eds.). (2011). Social innovation: Blurring boundaries to reconfigure markets. Basingstoke: Springer.

Nicholls & Ziegler (2015) Nicholls, A. , & Ziegler, R. (2015). An extended social grid model for the study of marginalization processes and social innovation. CRESSI Working Paper 2/2015.

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2016) UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) . (2016). Sustainable development goals. Retrieved from http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html. Accessed on September 30, 2016.

WEF (World Economic Forum) (2016) WEF (World Economic Forum) . (2016). These are the best economies to be a social entrepreneur. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/these-are-the-best-countries-to-be-a-social-entrepreneur/. Accessed on September 30, 2016.

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