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To study the relationship between organization structure and socio‐economic impact in the Welsh music industry and the potential role of social enterprises.

The economic value of social enterprise and the role of creative industries in urban regeneration are discussed from the viewpoint of the inclusion of marginalized workers, especially the young, into the labour‐market. Discusses the increasing political interest in social enterprise and explores evidence for this policy interest, including whether the nature of the governance and management structure of social enterprises influences their social and economic impacts. Reports preliminary stages of the research project and presents evidence gathered through case studies of three unnamed music businesses based in South Wales comprising: a development agency based on co‐operative principles; a loosely organized collective of practitioners and trainers; and a limited liability company. Explains that all three companies began by focusing on hip‐hop music but have developed in different directions and have also developed distinct forms of governance, and this enable the relationship between governance, the music industry, and socio‐economic outcomes to be studied.

The critical analysis of the potential of social enterprises to achieve social and economic regeneration supports the authors’ own conception of mutual economic activity in terms of what they call “associative entrepreneurship”. Concludes that this concept is needed because the existing definition of social enterprise has become too wide to have analytical value. Notes that the authors hope to present the research findings to a conference of creative industries’ academics in the coming year.

Presents the authors’ preliminary attempts to apply their knowledge of the social economy to the music industry as the first stage of a research project funded by the Welsh Assembly.

The central suggestion of this paper is that innovation in the concept of entrepreneurship is overdue and that the concept of entrepreneurship needs to be extended to accommodate its often neglected collective or pluralistic dimension, a concept termed “associative entrepreneurship”. It has also been argued that there may be a natural link between sustainability and the co‐operative form. In this paper these themes are drawn together by considering the entrepreneurial potential expressed by the recent creation of mutual businesses in a range of renewable energy sectors in Wales. It is suggested that, at least in the renewable energy sector and perhaps in other sectors too, innovation in the direction of sustainability may require a development of the concept of entrepreneurship in the direction of mutualism.

The paper takes the form of a theoretical discussion focusing around seven preliminary case studies.

As yet only a cluster of community‐based enterprises have been discovered in the renewable energy sector in Wales. The authors propose to study them in detail in the next stage of the research.

This is a developmental paper and many of its suggestions require rigorous testing. The authors would suggest that detailed case studies of the seven examples of associative enterprise in the renewable energy field outlined here, and others which may emerge during the research, would greatly enhance our understanding of what drives entrepreneurs in this field. Further research might also compare these examples with others organised according to more traditional business models.

In view of the urgent need to move towards a low‐carbon economy and the expansion of the renewable energy sector this would require, understanding of the motivations of entrepreneurs in this sector is of great value.

Innovation in the renewable energy sector may be being held back by the limitations of the concept of entrepreneurship.

To explore the link between enterprise scale, ownership and responsibility, specifically with regard to environmental responsibility. The paper argues that more local ownership and the co‐operative organisational form may ensure a higher level of corporate responsibility

The paper is mainly discursive, although three case‐studies of companies are used to illustrate the argument: Shell, Vaux Brewery, and Tower Colliery.

The central findings are that the nature of ownership, the scale of an enterprise, and the governance form are key considerations in terms of the corporate responsibility of firms.

Further explorations of CSR in relation to the nature of governance and ownership of firms, and the scale of their operations, would develop and explore this paper's central argument further and thus provide more valuable insights.

The paper suggests that the issue of scale and the role of co‐operatives may be of more significance as corporate governance comes under greater scrutiny and sustainability plays a more central role in business practice.

This is the first conceptual application of the concept of CSR to co‐operative ownership and governance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a case study which illustrates how specific skills can be embedded within an undergraduate business module thereby promoting wider criticality and an ethos of sustainability.

The paper analyses a pragmatic approach to redesigning a third‐year undergraduate module on twenty‐first century business topics such as globalisation and sustainability in which students acquire subject‐specific knowledge as well as the tools necessary for challenging current approaches. The redesign was guided by a series of emergent paradigms within the pedagogical literature, including student‐centred learning, emphasis on skills development and elements of the critical management perspective. “Questioning perceived wisdom” became the subtext for a series of activities linked to continuous assessment. Action research provided a basis for curricular development, and resulted in lectures with multiple viewpoints and a variety of weekly tasks including analyses of in‐class debates, surveys, and online discussions in small groups. The new structure also sought to address instrumental attitudes and student engagement. Rich qualitative and quantitative data were generated from the surveys, discussion groups, exam scripts and student feedback.

Data show that students responded well to those activities which implicitly reinforced the skills of “questioning” and judgement based on evidence. The increased engagement may be due to incentivisation of the chosen assessment structure and/or the heuristic nature of the varied activities.

This paper invites practitioners to shift away from “teaching” sustainability or criticality as an intellectual topic, and rather to concentrate more on creating those experiential opportunities where the student can develop the skills to question current dogma, whether neo‐liberalism or even environmental fundamentalism.

Purpose – The aim of this chapter is to explore the current trend for new ‘mutual’ models of public service delivery as part of a process of personalisation and commodification of health and social care design and service delivery.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors use the thesis of commodification and the concept of value to explore, with the aid of three examples from previous research, the complexity of transfer of large-scale services from local government and health bodies and the potential contribution of co-operatives and mutuals to this agenda.

Findings – Mutuals may provide an alternative to the supposedly inevitable progression to wholly commodified health and social care provision. However, a top-down push to encourage employee-owned enterprises may fail to take account of significant issues: high capital and labour costs; transfer of risk to consumers purchasing services; quality of care assurance; scope and scale of services; and enabling policies and structures to support democratic ownership and control of enterprises.

Research implications/limitations – Although the chapter focuses on Welsh experience, there are implications for the future provision of public services more generally.

Originality/value – This chapter contributes to a growing discourse and critical awareness of co-operatives and mutuals as potential public service providers. In particular, the nature of democratic engagement and involvement; models of co-ownership and co-construction of public services and the role of the State in promoting alternative non-marketised systems of design and delivery for the public good as well as maintaining accountability through local and national democratic processes.

The present crisis in the global economy is more serious than anything that we have witnessed since the 1930s, yet policies designed to tackle it are limited and inadequate. Those that have been proposed, in terms of fiscal stimulus, rely on an outmoded view of the economy, where money can be used to force economic growth. Since the recognition of planetary limits such a strategy is no longer admissible. Instead, we need a global system where countries agree to limit their carbon dioxide emissions: this chapter outlines the Contraction and Convergence model (C&C), which proposes that countries do this within a framework of equal per capita emissions for all global citizens. However, within the existing financial architecture such a policy would do nothing to prevent the United States from continuing to print dollars and to use these to gain an unfair share of world production. Other countries controlling reserve currencies would also be able to avoid strict limits. The policy answer proposed is that of the Ebcu (environment-backed currency unit) – a neutral global trading currency to be used by countries that have also signed up to the C&C model.