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The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of scholarly literature on community-based enterprise (CBE) through a bibliometric analysis and to comprehend the qualitative dimensions of research in this specific field.

The study is based on scholarly papers indexed in Scopus from 1990 to 2021. The bibliometric analysis focuses on journals, documents, writers, organizations and countries. VOSviewer is used for network visualization mapping of citation, co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-occurrence of keywords.

The analysis of the bibliometric aspects of CBE literature reveals an upward trend in publication of CBE documents, with a significant increase of research productivity in the past few years. This behaviour shows that CBE is becoming increasingly popular among academics and practitioners. The document “Toward a theory of community based enterprise” by Ana Maria Peredo is the most cited document. USA has so far published the maximum number of documents in this field.

This study provides an overview of the current state of research in the subject as well as the primary themes explored in this burgeoning discipline, with the potential to help the researchers identify new topics and gaps that need to be investigated further.

This work contributes to the literature by conducting a bibliometric analysis that has not yet been explored. It gives an overview of the field’s organization as well as specifics on the major issues explored in this discipline.

Early on it was recognized that this broad concept of entrepreneurship could be used to understand and improve the condition of particular disadvantaged populations; the so-called “under-developed” communities and regions (e.g. Danson, 1995). Only recently, however, has the notion been applied by scholars of entrepreneurship to a particular sector within this category, to the indigenous populations of the world.

The purpose of this chapter is to document the use of Participatory Action Research methods as an effective approach for community empowerment and strategies for more inclusive public policy.

The methodology draws on a “participatory video” project with recycling cooperatives in São Paulo, Brazil, and documents the process, benefits, and challenges of using action-oriented methods and tools as an approach to build capacity for political and social change. The authors provide a step-by-step process of facilitating a PV project, its application for policy engagement, and some of the major dilemmas in using PV, including representation, power, and vulnerability.

The research findings conclude that the application of Participatory Action Research as a research method in social entrepreneurship, contributes significantly to build transformative capacity in participating members, in addition to creating new spaces for inclusive policy.

The research is unique in that it points to creative and transformative methods of engagement for inclusive governance, embracing multiple forms of personal identity, knowledge and creative expression in moving toward new solutions for equal opportunities and possibilities for change. Participatory video is argued to be an innovative avenue for the inclusion of multiple voices in these arenas, voices of people otherwise left on the margins. Participatory video is an approach that has the potential to transform the way we (local and global) move toward greater social equity, human compassion, and environmental flourishing.

Third-sector organizations have been described as intermediate organizations (Evers, 1995) in mixed economies (Ben-Ner & van Hoomissen, 1991) that are situated in the interstices between the private and the public sector. This curious mode of defining a group of organizations in terms of something they are not has created a rich field of opportunities to explore the interfaces between them and other organizations in the private, public or third sectors. Research has emerged from this juxtaposition that explores the maintenance of organizational differences and the processes of organizational convergence. Interest in hybridization as a process to explain the management of the conflicting pressures to maintain difference and foster convergence has led to advances in institutional theory (Battilana & Dorado, 2010), institutional entrepreneurship (Tracey, Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011) and our understanding of bricolage (DiDomenico, Haugh, & Tracey, 2010). In their chapter, Le Ber and Branzei add to this area of critical analysis by adopting feminist theory to extend our understanding of hybridization practices in the third sector.

Purpose – The aim of this chapter is to analyse the discourse associated with, and preceding the establishment of, the community interest company (CIC) legal format in the United Kingdom in 2005. The analysis identifies the political, ideological, social and economic meta-narratives that are embedded in five key texts from which the CIC emerges and is codified.

Design, methodology and approach – The approach consists of a discourse analysis of five principal texts produced between 2002 and 2005 in which the idea of a CIC is articulated and refined prior to the launch of the CIC format in 2005.

Findings – Analysis of five key texts elucidates four meta-narratives that contrast political, ideological, social and economic discourse and counter-discourse.

Research implications and limitations – The selection of five key texts excludes other texts that were produced during the articulation and refinement of the CIC format. Further research to examine the diffusion, adoption and translation of the CIC legal format is recommended.

Practical implications – We show how the crafting of policy is embedded in meta-narratives that shape the content and implementation of policy.

Social implications – The CIC protects, in perpetuity, collectively held property rights through an asset lock, and enables capital to be raised from investors and trustees to be paid. These characteristics are beneficial in that community asset ownership can contribute to local development, e.g. by creating new ventures, generating jobs and anchoring wealth in communities; raising capital from investors can facilitate the enterprise to grow and scale up; and the expertise of the board can be enhanced by rewarding trustees financially for their involvement in the governance of the CIC.

Originality – This chapter presents the first critical analysis of the discourse associated with the origins of the idea for, and articulation of, the need for a legal format for social enterprises in the United Kingdom.