Editorial

Citation

Teasdale, S. (2018), "Editorial", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 246-247. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-08-2018-067

Welcome to the third issue of Social Enterprise Journal this year, and my first as editor. It is a great honor to take over from Bob Doherty who I have worked closely with over the past eight years. The journal is in excellent shape and I intend to build on the foundations Bob has laid for the journal rather than making wholesale changes. We are currently undergoing a refresh of the editorial board and I have invited some new members with a particular focus on quantitative skills. Also, Michael Roy has joined me as Deputy Editor and will work closely with the existing Associate Editors Chris Mason and Janelle Kerlin. Going forward, we are seeking to increase the number of articles per issue and the impact factor of the journal to improve our position in the various journal ranking systems. We will also seek to reduce the average turnaround time for papers. We have some exciting special issues lined up. The next issue of the journal will be guest edited by David Littlewood and Zaheer Khan and will focus on social enterprise and networks. We have also just launched a call for papers for a special issue on social enterprise and health, guest edited by Michael Roy and Kelly Hall. Plans are in the pipeline for future special issues on the cultural economy and critical perspectives on social innovation.

There are seven papers in this issue of Social Enterprise Journal. The first, by Jenny Morrison and Kathryn Semcow, explores the potential for extending the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program to the social sciences to create social innovation. The article contributes to a developing literature on social enterprise and innovation education, which social enterprise journal is keen to publish.

The second article, by Emerald Jay Ilac, extends recent literature on social enterprise and leadership (Jackson et al., 2018) through a phenomenological analysis of the lived experiences of social enterprise leaders in the Philippines. This leads the author to develop a framework of leadership development for social entrepreneurs.

The third article, by Omid Sabbaghi and Gerald Cavanagh, further contributes to literature on social enterprise education through an analysis of students experiential learning gained through exposure to the Global Social Benefit Institute of Santa Clara University. The article will be of particular interest to those also interested in faith-based approaches to teaching social enterprise.

Our fourth article, by Anne Humbert and Muhammad Roomi, adds to the literature on social enterprise and gender via a quantitative analysis of the motivations of women social entrepreneurs. The authors find that, as well as being driven by self-interest and pro-social motivations, women seek to develop alternative business models. An interesting finding, worthy of future exploration, is a strong relationship between self-interest and revenue.

The fifth article, by Morven McEarchern, Emma Sutton and Kevin Kane, returns to the theme of social enterprise education, focusing on how higher education institutions in the UK use the social enterprise mark to communicate their social agendas. This article has wider relevance to those interested in marketing social enterprise to internal and external audiences.

The sixth article, by Sharon Zivkovic, adds to an emergent literature on the use of labs to incubate social innovation (Steiner and Teasdale, 2016) through a discussion of some of the problems faced by existing lab type. This leads the author to propose a new lab type – the Systemic Innovation Lab – as a vehicle to address wicked problems.

Our final article, by Nimruji Jammulamadaka and Kamalika Chakraborty, is a fascinating study of the local geographical distribution of social enterprises within an Indian State. The article suggests that clusters of social enterprises emerge around networks of resources – often initiated by development aid. The author discusses the potential negative ramifications for those areas without the necessary infrastructure to deliver social welfare through social enterprise. This article usefully extends similar geographic analyses of social enterprise distribution around finance networks (Sunley and Pinch, 2012) to developing country contexts.

Over the summer, the editorial team will be attending various conferences, most notably the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Chicago in August and the International Social Innovation Research Conference in Heidelberg in September. Also, in September, the Social Enterprise World Forum will be hosted in Edinburgh, with an academic symposium held in Glasgow. If you have an idea for a paper or a special issue, please make contact with me at these events or just e-mail me at simon.teasdale@gcu.ac.uk