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This paper aims to document the nature of social enterprise models in Australia, their evolution and institutional drivers.

The paper draws on secondary analysis of source materials and the existing literature on social enterprise in Australia. Analysis was verified through consultation with key actors in the social enterprise ecosystem.

With its historical roots in an enterprising non-profit sector and the presence of cooperative and mutual businesses, the practice of social enterprise in Australia is relatively mature. Yet, the language of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship remains marginal and contested. The nature of social enterprise activity in Australia reflects the role of an internally diverse civil society within an economically privileged society and in response to an increasingly residualised welfare state. Australia’s geography and demography have also played determining roles in the function and presence of social enterprise, particularly in rural and remote communities.

The paper contributes to comparative understandings of social enterprise and provides the first detailed account of social enterprise development in Australia.

The purpose of this paper is to review the development and impact of the Social Enterprise Journal (SEJ) from its inception in 2005 until present day.

The paper analyses the thematic content of SEJ and its impact data from 2005 until 2017.

SEJ has broken new ground in the study of social enterprise (SE). It was the first journal back in 2005 to commence the exploration of this field and since has been the first to publish works on defining SE, their performance management, critical perspectives plus international differences. The paper shows that in the early years, SEJ was dominated by conceptual work aiming to understand SE plus their governance and performance management, which was mainly based on UK descriptive case studies and uncritical. By 2010, SEJ became established internationally with various issues being 100 per cent dominated by international aspects of SE. Recent more critical work has also enabled a process of “myth busting” in the SE field. This paper also shows the growth of SEJ in downloads and citations.

The paper demonstrates the important role SEJ has played in both improving practice and informing policy.

The paper is the first to review the development and impact of SEJ.

Despite the importance gained by social enterprises (SEs) and the increased number of social enterprise networks (SENs) in the UK, there is a paucity of research into the role of these networks in enhancing the sector and creating value. The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence assessing this value.

The assessment and insights were derived through a concurrent mixed method data collection strategy with 241 responses from members of SEs in the UK.

In terms of frequency, the use of SENs is still sporadic, denoting an immature stage of network lifecycle development. Moreover, it was identified that usage was affected primarily by the perceived usefulness of the information available. The ultimate value created was primarily of an informative nature rather than knowledge exchange.

A framework is developed describing the structure, content and interaction dimensions of value of SENs. The understanding of this value offers opportunities to shape government interventions and current practices of SENs in assisting SEs and providing an active, knowledge sharing community.

By exploring the value perceived by social entrepreneurs of being part of an SEN, the paper considered an under-researched area of SE literature that can maximised the impact of the sector.

For the past decade, sub-post offices (POs) in the UK have been subject to intensive pressures to marketise their business. Actual or threatened closures have led charities to become involved in projects to preserve community post offices. This paper aims to investigate the attitudes of the trustees and staff involved in six charity-backed POs to answer the research question “Do those involved with charity-backed POs prioritise profit generation or community resourcing?”

This research adopted a neo-empiricist stance on the collection and interpretation of data. The authors treated “attitudes” as real phenomena that are subjectively experienced and concretely expressed through activities in an objectively real world. Data were gathered from four or more people in each of six POs by sampling their services and conducting face-to-face interviews. The emphasis was on achieving verstehen – a rich understanding of a specific approach to social enterprise grounded in interpretations of human activity under conditions of naturalistic inquiry.

The authors found that charity-backed POs were focussed on preserving POs as a community resource but articulated this by framing profitability in three distinct ways: as a PO generating a surplus that can be gifted or reallocated to a (parent) charity’s other activities; as an activity that offsets a charity’s fixed costs; or enables or promotes its public benefit aims.

There are few peer-reviewed studies of the potential of sub-POs as sites for social enterprise, and none (that could be located) on the role of charities. In this study, the authors contest Liu and Ko’s view (2014, p. 402) that the key task is “to install market-oriented managerial beliefs and values into the charity retailer’s decision-making”. A counter view is offered that trading can represent a further diversification of the innovations used to support charitable endeavours.

This is the first academic study to confront the complexities of differentiating “profitability” from “profit generation” in charity-backed POs. The subtleties in the articulation of this difference by study participants helped to account for the findings of the study and to make sense of the strong consensus that POs should be seen primarily as a community resource while responding to marketisation pressures.

The purpose of the research is to identify the degree of intensity of barriers to the activities of social enterprises (SEs) and to examine the significance of such barriers regarding the financial situation of SE’s in emerging economies.

The data relates to 200 SEs selected from a national survey of 1,300 Polish non-governmental organizations (NGOs). An analysis of barriers to SEs according to the frequency of their occurrence was conducted. An indicator of the intensity of barriers to the activities of social enterprises and an indicator on these enterprises’ overall financial condition were determined. Spearman rank correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between the indices.

The results of the study indicate that in addition to excessive bureaucracy in public administration and the complex formalities related to the use of private and public funds, SEs have difficulties in maintaining good staff and volunteers, whereas people in key positions reference burnout, not only among their own employees but also in themselves. These have a significant impact on the financial situation of SEs.

This study contributes to the field of social entrepreneurship in two ways. One is at the macro level in that it provides suggestions for public authorities in emerging economies interested in maintaining SEs in good financial condition so that they can effectively fulfil their social functions. The second contribution – the micro approach – is recognizing the extent of the impact of barriers on the financial condition of SEs and also determining the intensity of such barriers with regard to the mobilization of resources by managers, especially in the field of human resources.

This study aims to assess the alignment of South Korea’s government-certified social enterprises (GCSEs) with prevailing social enterprise (SE) models, notably the entrepreneurial nonprofit, social cooperative and social business models delineated in the “Emergence of Social Enterprises in Europe” (Defourny and Nyssens, 2012, 2017a, 2017b) and the “principle of interest” frameworks (Defourny et al., 2021). Thereby, it seeks to situate these enterprises within recognized frameworks and elucidate their hybrid identities.

Analyzing panel data from 2016 to 2020 for 259 GCSEs, this study uses tslearn for k-means clustering with dynamic time warping to assess their developmental trajectories and alignment with established SE models, which echoes the approach of Defourny et al. (2021). We probe the “fluid” identities of semi-public sector SEs, integrating Gordon’s (2013) notion that they tend to blend various SE traditions as opposed to existing in isolation.

Results indicate that GCSEs do align with prevalent SE frameworks. Furthermore, they represent a spectrum of SE models, suggesting the versatility of the public sector in fostering diverse types of SEs.

The concept of a semi-public sector SE model has been relatively uncharted, even though it holds significance for research on SE typologies and public sector entrepreneurship literature. This study bridges this gap by presenting empirical evidence of semi-public SEs and delineating the potential paths these enterprises might take as they amalgamate various SE traditions.

Delivering housing to resource-constrained communities (RCCs) is a complex process beset with difficulties. The purpose of this study is to use a complexity lens to examine the approach taken by a social enterprise (SE) in Australia to develop and manage a housebuilding supply chain for RCCs.

The research team used a longitudinal case study approach from 2017 to 2022, which used mixed methods to understand the phenomenon and gain an in-depth understanding of the complex issues and problem-solving undertaken by an SE start-up.

Balancing mission logic with commercial viability is challenging for an SE. The supply chain solution that evolved accommodated the particulars of geography and the needs of many stakeholders, including the end-user community and government sponsors. Extensive and time-consuming socialisation and customisation led to a successful technical design and sustainable supply chain operation.

Analysing supply chain intricacies via a complexity framework is valuable for scholars and practitioners, assisting in designing and developing supply chain configurations and understanding their dynamics. Meeting the housing construction needs of RCCs requires the SE to place societal focus at the centre of the supply chain rather than merely being a system output. The developed business model complements the engineering solution to empower a community-led housing construction supply chain.

This longitudinal case study contributes to knowledge by providing rich insights into the roles of SEs and how they develop and operate supply chains to fit with the needs of RCCs. Adding a contextual response dimension to an established complexity framework helped to explain how hybrid organisations balance commercial viability demands with social mission logic by amending traditional supply chain and governance practices. The case provides insights into supply chain configuration, needed changes and potential impacts when an SE as a focal actor inserts into a traditional for-profit construction supply chain.

The context conditions for third sector organizations (TSOs) in Europe have significantly changed as a result of the global economic crisis, including decreasing levels of public funding and changing modes of relations with the state. The effect of economic recession, however, varies across Europe. The purpose of this paper is to understand why this is the case. It analyses the impact of economic recession and related policy changes on third sector development in Europe. The economic effects on TSOs are thereby placed into a broader context of changing third sector policies and welfare state restructuring.

The paper focusses on two research questions: how has the changing policy environment affected the development of the third sector? And what kind of strategies have TSOs adopted to respond to these changes? The paper first investigates general trends in Europe, based on a conceptual model that focusses on economic recession and austerity policies with regard to the third sector. In a second step of analysis, the paper provides five country case studies that exemplify policy changes and responses from the third sector in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

The paper argues that three different development paths can be identified across Europe. In some countries (France and Spain), TSOs face a strong effect of economic recession. In other countries (Germany and Poland) the development of the third sector remains largely stable, albeit at different levels, whereas in the Netherlands, TSOs rather experience changes in the policy environment than a direct impact of economic decline. The paper also shows that response strategies of the third sector in Europe depend on the context conditions. The paper is based on the European project “Third Sector Impact.” It combines an analysis of statistical information with qualitative data from interviews with third sector representatives.

The paper contributes to our understanding of the interrelation between economic recession, long-term policy changes and third sector development in Europe.

This paper aims to improve upon the initial quantitative assessment of Kerlin’s macro-institutional social enterprise (MISE) framework (Monroe-White et al., 2015) to test for the effect of country-level institutions on the social enterprise sector. Major improvements are the inclusion of the civil society variable and expansion of the culture component in the analysis.

By following Kerlin’s (2013) original work that draws on the theory of historical institutionalism, this paper employs multi-level regression analysis to test the effect of country-level institutional factors on organizational-level social enterprise across countries. This analysis uses new macro-level data specifically for civil society and culture components.

The initial assessment of the framework found that several country-level factors had a significant effect on the variance in the size of the social enterprise sector across countries. The analysis provided here additionally shows a significant positive influence of civil society on the size of the social enterprise sector and shows that formal institutions capture the effect of informal cultural institutions when included in the model together.

This analysis provides policymakers, development actors and researchers with a better understanding of the influence of civil society on social enterprises and the interaction between formal and informal institutional underlying factors.

This paper’s significant contribution is the addition of civil society in the MISE analysis, which was not possible before owing to lack of data, and additional cultural analysis.

This paper critically assesses Western views on the social economy in contrast to everyday realities in a low-income country, and challenges ethnocentric epistemologies in the discourse of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship that is prevalent in international development. It charts the changing trajectory of the social economy and different influences.

Qualitative data is used to explore views of members of social enterprises in Northern Cambodia. Three enterprises with different characteristics were selected. Semi-structured interviews and a group discussion took place in each case, exploring motivation, values, empowerment, participation, equity, innovation and risk appetite.

The important roles social enterprises play in rural community development are sometimes at odds with the reasoning of Western development agencies. The social economy in Cambodia is undergoing change with the advancement of capitalist market forces. This suits formal businesses but could exacerbate the exclusion of various community actors.

Three case studies are in close proximity in Northern Cambodia, and the situated dynamics may not transfer well to other contexts. Some limitations are offset by the selection of different types of social enterprises.

The study gives insights of value to the designers of programmes or projects to support social enterprise who work within international development agencies and non-government organisations. For academics, it offers critical insight into assumptions about social enterprise that emanate from Western management literature.

This paper meets the need for close-up inter-disciplinary work on social enterprise development in under-represented contexts.