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This paper aims to explain the development of the social economy by analyzing when, why and how the community interest company (CIC) legal structure was established in the UK. The CIC legal structure was designed for social enterprise to ensure that company assets are committed to public benefit in perpetuity.

This research paper uses archival data and semistructured interviews to analyze the historical development of the social economy, emergence of social enterprise and the establishment of the CIC legal structure.

The historical analysis describes why and how the idea for the CIC emerged from practitioners and explains how collaboration between practitioners, lawyers, civil servants and politicians established the CIC as a new legal structure for social enterprise.

The analysis explains how practitioners influenced policy development and demonstrates how practitioner influence can be usefully incorporated into policy development.

The CIC legal structure advanced the social economy by creating an institutionally recognized brand identity for social enterprise that locks assets to public benefit in perpetuity.

The paper presents a detailed empirical account of the establishment of a new legal structure for social enterprise and applies theoretical concepts to develop an integrated account of social economy advancement.

Business sustainability urges firms to simultaneously address economic, ecological, and social concerns. It innately combines different potentially competing organizational elements. Therefore, sustainability represents a suitable context for the study and practice of hybridity. Based on an understanding of hybridity as a continuum, in this chapter, the author distinguish between four different forms of hybridity for business sustainability, depending on the degree of integration and autonomy of sustainability initiatives in business organizations. With ceremonial hybridity, businesses only leave the impression to pursue business and sustainability goals but focus their practices on conventional business priorities. Contingent hybridity denotes an approach where ecological and social concerns are only pursued to the extent that they align with business goals. With peripheral hybridity, firms pursue sustainability initiatives in their own right but do not integrate them with core business activities. Full hybridity puts both business as well as sustainability at the core of the organization without emphasizing one over the other. These different forms of hybridity in business sustainability are illustrated with examples from various business organizations. By characterizing different degrees of hybridity in business sustainability, the argument and the examples highlight how organizational hybridity and business sustainability can fruitfully inform one another. The author develop research opportunities for using business sustainability as a context for studying different degrees as well as the dynamics of hybrid organizing and for using different degrees of hybridity for achieving a better understanding of different pathways toward substantive business contributions to sustainable development.

Despite the increase in empirical studies of social enterprise in management and organization research, the lack of a cohesive knowledge base in this area is concerning. In this chapter, we propose that the underdevelopment of the attendant research infrastructure is an important, but oft-overlooked, barrier to the development of this body of empirical research.

We explore this proposition through a review of 55 empirical studies of social enterprises published in the last fifteen years, in which we examine the mix and trajectory of research methods used and the research infrastructure on which these studies depend.

We find that empirical research has used social enterprise largely as a context for theory development, rather than deductively testing, and thus building upon, existing theories. The latter pattern is due largely to the absence of two key dimensions of infrastructure: well-defined samples, and consistent, operational measures of social enterprise success. Finally, we identify present trends along both dimensions that contribute to changing the research infrastructure for empirical social enterprise research.

Our analysis highlights the critical need for research infrastructure to advance empirical research on social enterprise. From this perspective, research infrastructure-building provides an important opportunity for researchers interested in social enterprise and others interested in enabling high-quality empirical research in this setting.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify and understand the obstacles hindering social entrepreneurship as a business model. Methodology/Approach: We performed an exploratory analysis structured in three stages. First, we used the Delphi method to identify the main difficulties with the collaboration of 20 social entrepreneurship experts. We then analyzed how these experts and a group of 21 social entrepreneurs rated the importance of the difficulties that had been identified. Finally, we performed a comparative analysis of both groups' ratings and found significant differences between their perceptions. Findings: Experts and social entrepreneurs agree on identifying financial difficulties as the main obstacles. They all highlight the lack of financial resources and difficulties in the sustainability and independence of the venture in the long term. However, while the experts recognize that human resources' lack of skills is another important obstacle, the social entrepreneurs give more importance to external factors, such as resistance to social change or lack of knowledge and understanding of the social entrepreneurship concept. Practical Implications: The decision to seek the collaboration of two different groups is enriching, as the results show that their perceptions of the barriers facing social entrepreneurship do not always coincide. Originality/Value of Chapter: It is a chapter focused exclusively on deepening the knowledge of the obstacles to social entrepreneurship, which tries not only to identify them but also to offer the vision of experts in social entrepreneurship as well as of social entrepreneurs themselves.

This chapter relies on comparative case analysis to examine how and why particular social entrepreneurs in a higher Asian middle income economy broke new grounds in private higher education. The study provides arguments as to why these private higher education entrepreneurs, when viewed inclusively, are social entrepreneurs. Findings from the study suggest that social entrepreneurs distinctively used prior insights from their working experiences to harness the financial power of local capital to fund the scaling up of their social ventures while simultaneously engaging with the country’s economic and social challenges.

This chapter develops a community perspective on entrepreneurialization and demonstrates the epistemic value of community-based analysis. It focuses on the particularities of socio-economic settings that shape the emergence of social enterprises and allows for a consideration of diverse groups of actors beyond entrepreneurs.

The chapter draws from a literature review on UK policies around social enterprise and an ethnographic study of a deprived community in North-West England. It provides an in-depth account of how competition for scarce funds and the new hope around entrepreneurialism are negotiated and translated into action by policy actors in one local community.

The review contextualizes the evolution of social enterprise in the United Kingdom and highlights the need for grounded analysis of the effects of policies. A range of themes emerge from the ethnographic case: a misalignment between social workers’ and beneficiaries’ expectations and interests; a tendency to shift from holistic welfare to narrow, time-limited interventions; the importance of spatiality for issues of deprivation; and imbalances in the flows of money and attention between different communities.

The chapter questions the emphasis placed upon social enterprise as a source of innovation. The suggested focus on community redirects scholarly debate to the most important group of actors: the socially, politically, or economically excluded target groups of social innovations.

This chapter contributes to our understanding of the roles being played by social enterprises in a community and raises questions about their value as a vehicle of policy and of innovation.

The emergence of social entrepreneurship, since its nascent stage, brought to light the imminent need to make the social value creating models workable by measuring the value created by them. This study reviews the existing literature from the past two decades to establish the role of accounting techniques in the measurement of social value. Nine databases were searched with the word combination “SROI” and “social enterprise” to determine the number of publications related to the field and the trend in its publishing. A classification of themes from selected studies was conducted to establish the direction of research in this context. Social return on investment (SROI) has been tested as a compatible measure and its implementation in various scenarios produced results; however, the inadequacy of its outcomes gives rise to the question whether any measurement tool can be appropriate for social value measurement because there is a need to justify the measurement of social value. The current trends call for further research in the field of customized measurement tools for the measurement of social value.

In this conceptual chapter we examine the impact of the institutional role of public social policy as opposed to the individual role of private social entrepreneurship on the process of social change and value creation.

We review the above fields in order to identify their common and distinctive characteristics. We also examine how each contributes to social value creation and in which way these two sources of social value creation can interact in order to maximize their positive impact.

The value of our work relies on the development analysis reveals that the intersection between social policy and social entrepreneurship constitutes one of the possible responses to the growing uncertainty in the global economy and society. In a conceptual level, the findings of our theoretical inquiry allow us to provide a framework for better understanding the nature and the possible implications of social entrepreneurial/policy activities that allows the appropriate selection of the proper actions to be made for theorists, practitioners, and policy-makers alike.

Our work contributes to existing literature by providing views on understanding how the different forms of organizational actions (public policy vs. social entrepreneurship) act toward social value creation; and by contributing to the understanding of their similarities and differences and the distinctive frameworks within which they unfold.

This paper discusses the practical impact of recent European Union (EU) hygiene legislation on small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the fish‐processing industry in north‐east Scotland. Using data gathered via participant observation and in‐depth interviews, the paper reveals the attitudes and responses from four SMEs to the most recent EU hygiene requirements, and discusses the lessons that can be learned from their experiences. The results highlight the impact of an industry culture in which modernisation was interpreted by some as unnecessary. Incorporating responses from the local authority and regional trade association, the conclusion emphasises the need for cultural sensitivity in policy development and implementation. The research also endorses the need for SMEs to adopt a proactive approach to influencing future legislation, and to be actively involved in pre‐statutory collaboration and consultation.