Editorial

Citation

Doherty, B. (2016), "Editorial", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 258-259. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-11-2016-048

SEJ Third Editorial 2016

I am delighted to introduce to you the Social Enterprise Journal’s (SEJ) third edition of 2016 published by Emerald publishers. First, I would like to thank the journal board, the selected reviewers and of course the authors for the papers enclosed. First, I am pleased to announce SEJ has been accepted into Thompson Reuter’s ESCI list, and you will be able to view it here: http://ip-science.thomsonreuters.com/mjl/. The link http://wokinfo.com/media/pdf/ESCI_Fact_Sheet.pdf?utm_source=false&utm_medium=false&utm_campaign=false provides more information about the new index.

Furthermore, we have strengthened the editorial management team of SEJ with two new associate editors, in addition to Simon Teasdale. First, Janelle Bassett Kerlin at Georgia State University, USA, joins SEJ as Associate editor for the Americas and Chris Mason from Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, with responsibilities for Australasia.

Now, to the seven papers for this largest ever issue of SEJ; the first paper is co-authored by Penille Smith and Caecille Maibom (Aarhus Universitet, Denmark), titled “Symbiosis across Institutional Logics in a Social Enterprise”. This paper investigates how hybrid organisations experience and respond to an organisational environment marked by multiple institutional logics. Unlike the subjects of many previous studies, the organisation managed to accommodate and assemble the logics in an unproblematic symbiosis. A strong ideological congruence across institutional logics appears to play a key role in spanning the boundaries. The second paper is co-authored by Lin Chen-Ju and Chen Hwang-Yeh (Tzu Chi University of Science and Technology), titled “User Expectancies for Green Products: A Case Study on the Internal Customers of a Social Enterprise”. This paper uses the outcome expectancy theory from the social cognitive framework and concept of planned behaviour to structure an outside-inside user expectancy model for identifying the elements that influence internal customers to select green products.

The third paper is co-authored by Richard Hazenberg, Meanu Bajwa-Patel (University of Northampton), Micaela Mazzei, Michael James Roy and Simone Baglioni (Glasgow Caledonian University, Yuns Centre), titled “The role of institutional and stakeholder networks in shaping social enterprise ecosystems in Europe”. This paper draws upon prior research that built a theoretical framework for the emergence of social enterprise ecosystems based upon the biological evolutionary theory. This paper seeks to extend this previous research by practically applying the theory to the development of stakeholder and institutional networks across Europe. The fourth is authored by Elizabeth Bennett (Lewis and Clark College Department of Political Science – International Affairs), titled “Governance, Legitimacy, and Stakeholder Balance: Lessons from Fairtrade International”. This article explains why Fairtrade International, which aims to empower the producers of its certified products, at times (paradoxically), excluded them from its highest bodies of governance. A within-case study of Fairtrade’s inclusive and exclusive reforms over 25 years, along with insights from the social enterprise, hybrid governance and political sociology literatures, are used to generate several propositions about how voluntary sustainability standards-setting organizations engage stakeholders, especially producers in governance.

The fifth paper by Habib Kachlami (Mid University Sweden) is titled “Social Venture Creation and the Influence of Commercial Ventures”. The aim of this paper is to understand how social and commercial ventures interact with each other. It investigates how the entry, exit and prevalence of commercial ventures in a given region can influence the creation of social ventures. The sixth paper is authored by Neil Bishop (Manager of Darnall Forum and Darnall Forum Trading), Rory Ridley-Duff, (Reader in Co-operative and Social Enterprise at Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University) and Gareth Morgan (Emeritus Professor of Charity Studies, Sheffield Business School, Sheffield Hallam University), titled “Profit generation or community resource? Studying attitudes to the operation of a post office by a charity”. The paper presented at this year’s ISIRC conference investigates the attitudes of the trustees and staff involved in six charity-backed post offices (POs) to answer the research question “Do those involved with charity-backed POs prioritise profit generation or community resourcing?”. This is the first academic study to confront the complexities of differentiating “profitability” from “profit generation” in charity-backed POs.

Our final paper is authored by Juha Klemelä (University of Turku, Finland), titled “Licence to operate: Social Return on Investment (SROI) as a multidimensional discursive legitimating means of organisational action”. The paper demonstrates how the SROI method legitimates organisations or projects with multiple other discursive ways, besides the SROI ratio. It also discusses the status of these other ways of legitimation in relation to the quantifying and monetising core tendency of SROI.