Editorial

Citation

Doherty, B. (2017), "Editorial", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 2-3. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-02-2017-051

SEJ First Editorial 2017

I am delighted to introduce to you the Social Enterprise Journal (SEJ)’s 1st edition of 2017 (volume 13) published by Emerald publishers. Firstly, I would like to thank the journal board, the selected reviewers and of course the authors for the papers enclosed.

Now to the six papers for this issue of SEJ. The first paper co-authored by Roger Reinsch, Raymond Jones and Randy Skalberg (University of Minnesota Duluth, USA) titled “The Hobby Lobby decision: legal formation for social enterprises made easier” is a thought piece discussing the most appropriate US legal form to avoid the potential for mission drift in social enterprise. The second paper co-authored by both Subhanjan Sengupta and Arunaditya Sahay (Birla Institute of Management Technology, India) titled “Social entrepreneurship research in Asia-Pacific: perspectives and opportunities” investigates key works published on social entrepreneurship in the APAC region and provides an important foundational platform for those researching social entrepreneurship in the Asia-Pacific region.

The third paper co-authored by Michelle Munro Medina and Charles Belanger (Laurentian University, Ontario, Canada) and titled “Analysing external environment factors affecting social enterprise development” is a quantitative study set in the Canadian context comparing social enterprise revenue and the factors in the external environment to help shed light on factors that facilitate social enterprise development. The fourth paper authored by Anne Margarian (Thuenen Institute for Rural Studies, Germany) titled “Tell me your financing and I tell you who you are: organizations’ strategies and project funds’ effectiveness” implements a latent class analysis on the effectiveness of different financial strategies in social enterprises.

The next two papers study social entrepreneurship in the Brazilian context. The fifth paper authored by a team including Carlos Quandt, Alex Ferraresi, Claudineia Kudlawicz, Janaína Martins (PUC-PR) and Ariane Machado (Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Parana Curitiba, Brazil) titled “Social innovation practices in the regional tourism industry: case study of a cooperative in Brazil” investigates an underprivileged community in North Eastern Brazil to analyse the main elements of the social innovation process. Our final paper is authored by Leandro Morais (Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Campinas, Brazil), Anup Dash (Utkal University, India) and Miguel Juan Bacic (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil) and is titled “Social and solidarity economics in India and Brazil”. This article presents the policies in the field of Social and Solidarity Economics (SSE) in India and Brazil, to draw a comparison between both countries.

I would also like to draw your attention to two SEJ special issues. The first one edited by Chris Mason, Cristina Neesham and Jo Barraket is on “Social Enterprise in Oceania: Evidence, Opportunities and Challenges”. This call for papers is already up on the SEJ home page. The second special issue on “Social Enterprise and Networks” will soon be available on the website and will be guest edited by Dr David Littlewood at the University of Sheffield (david.littlewood@sheffield.ac.uk) and Dr Zaheer Khan (khan.zaheer@gmail.com)

The SEJ is also delighted to announce that for the first time, the International Social Innovation Research conference (ISIRC) 2017 will take place in Melbourne, Australia. The scheduled dates for the conference are December 12-14, 201. The venue is Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, and the conference website has been established and is now available at www.isircconference.com. Early confirmed keynote speakers are Prof Bronwen Morgan (University of New South Wales), Prof Alex Nicholls (Oxford) and Prof Katherine Gibson (University of Western Sydney). The conference theme is: Beyond Boundaries? Organisations, Systems and Social Innovation.

Social innovations are often presented as solutions to wicked social problems and operate across sectors, disrupting traditions of policy and practice. Social innovations – including social enterprise, design-led service creation and citizen co-production – are initiated within, between and beyond the bounds of established organisational forms. Redefining boundaries creates new opportunities for combining wisdom and resources for progressive social change. Yet, critical scholars have observed that many popularised social innovations are limited in their focus on systemic change, and subject to isomorphic pressures from government and commercial interests. Others have argued that individual social innovations are limited in their effectiveness without wider systems-thinking in the design of social innovation policy and practice.

The ninth annual ISIRC (2017) will explore social innovation within and beyond the organisation. It invites research-led reflection on the organisational boundaries recast by social innovation, the systemic imperatives of a growing focus on social innovation and the implications of these for theory and practice. Empirical, conceptual and practice-informed research contributions are encouraged.