Editorial

Citation

Doherty, B. (2009), "Editorial", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 5 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/sej.2009.37305baa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Social Enterprise Journal, Volume 5, Issue 2

I am delighted to introduce to you the second issue of 2009 for the Social Enterprise Journal (SEJ) 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.

It is the aim of SEJ to play a key part in establishing social enterprise as a recognised sub-discipline by leading the theorisation of social enterprise and developing the international evidence base. The editor will use this editorial to comment on both the papers contained in this edition and to report on some of the new developments with regard to the SEJ.

The first paper by Daniel Shah (Research and Policy Office at UK’s Social Enterprise Coalition) is a thought piece looking at the current UK policy environment for social enterprise. The Social Enterprise Coalition is the UK’s national body for social enterprise, established in 2002; the Coalition represents a wide range of social enterprises. Set against a background of political and economic turbulence this paper reviews a number of significant events for social enterprise in the UK, including the UK Voice Conference attended by David Cameron (Leader of the UK Conservative party) and the recent Ministerial Summit for social enterprise co-hosted by Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Liam Byrne, Minister for the Cabinet Office and attended by Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Kevin Brennan, Minister for the Third Sector, as well as a number of social enterprise leaders. The paper identifies both the key issues for social enterprise practitioners and suggested areas for research by the academic community.

Our second paper by Briga Hynes (Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the Department of Management and Marketing at the University of Limerick in Ireland) investigates the subject of social enterprise growth. It is interesting that the challenges of growing social enterprise and the support structures to facilitate this is a key theme emerging from Daniel Shah’s thought piece. The third paper is from Dr Janusz Reichel and Agata Rudnicka at the Faculty of Management, University of Lodz in Poland. Their paper takes an interesting look at the collaboration between actors in both the social economy and private sector in Poland. There are a number of transferable lessons highlighted in this paper.

Our fourth and fifth papers both started as conference presentations from the Fifth Social Enterprise Research Conference at London South Bank in June 2008. The fourth paper by Professor Alex Murdock (London South Bank University) and Brian Lamb (Director of Communications at the Royal National Institute for the Deaf) is a case study of innovation in a large UK third sector organisation. The resulting digital hearing aids have improved significantly the service provided via public sector provision. Our fifth paper by Jim McLoughlin, Jaime Kaminski, Babak Sodagar, Sabina Khan, Robin Harris, Gustavo Arnaudo and Sinéad Mc Brearty is a collaboration between Brighton Business School at the University of Brighton and Social Enterprise London. The paper develops a strategic approach to social impact measurement within social enterprises and provides a useful review of other impact measurement tools being utilised by social enterprises.

Over the past six months the SEJ team has been working to both develop the journal’s content and raise the awareness of the publication. First, we have launched a call for papers for a special edition in Social Enterprise Governance. The call for papers can be seen at www.emeraldinsight.com/sej.htm. The Guest Editor is Dr Chris Mason from Liverpool Business School whose research interests are focused on the issues surrounding social enterprise governance. The deadline for full submissions is 6 November 2009 with publication planned for the second issue of SEJ in 2010. Chris Mason can be contacted at c.mason@ljmu.ac.uk or by telephone on +44151 2313447. We are also in discussions with Social Enterprise London about a special edition of SEJ for 2011 based on social enterprise and the London 2012 Olympics.

In addition, the journal team have attended a number of conferences and presented best paper awards. First, the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) Entrepreneurship Conference 26-27 February 2009 best paper award went to Päivi Karhunen, Svetlana Ledyaeva, Anne Gustafsson-Pesonen, Elena Mochnikova, Dmitry Vasilenko’s, “Russian students’ perceptions of entrepreneurship results of a survey in three St Petersburg universities”. Second, the International Conference on Market, Marketing and Entrepreneurship (Antalya, Turkey, 6-9 April 2009) best paper award went to the excellent paper by Professor Monica Diochon (St Francis Xavier University, Canada) entitled “The role of social enterprise boards in fostering entrepreneurship”.

We have also agreed with EMES to present a best paper award at the Second EMES International Conference in Social Enterprise 1-4 July in Trento, Italy. At this same conference we will also run an authors workshop for those researchers planning to publish their work. In addition, we will also be working on a special conference edition from the International Social Innovation: Reconfiguring Markets, Blurring Sector Boundaries and Challenging Institutional Arrangements Research Conference, 14-16 September 2009 at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Emerald will have a presence at the Babson College Enterprise Research Conference (3-6 June 2009), the ICSB World Congress on 21-24 June 2009, the 12th McGill International Entrepreneurship Conference at Hanken School of Economics Finland, 18-20 September 2009. In addition, we will also attend and present a number of papers at the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship 32nd Annual Conference in Liverpool, UK on 3-6 November 2009.

Emerald have also be analysing the impact of SEJ by looking at the breakdown of regional downloads of papers from the journal. The figures below show a really good spread of interest across the world and underlines the internationality of the journal:

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  UK 28 per cent;

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  Malaysia 18 per cent;

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  Australia 9 per cent;

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  India 6 per cent;

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  USA 6 per cent;

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  Spain 5 per cent;

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  Bulgaria 4 per cent;

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  Germany 4 per cent;

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  Korea 3 per cent;

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  Sweden 2 per cent;

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  Poland 2 per cent; and

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  Singapore 2 per cent.

From the 1 July 2009 SEJ will move to Manuscript Central which is an online facility for authors to submit and track their papers. This move will help manage the increasing number of papers being received from the growth in researching social enterprise.

Bob Doherty