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Bringing more impact seems to be a real issue for social initiatives and organizations requiring the adoption of new approaches. The paper aims to define an integrated approach for building, maintaining and upgrading Islamic social finance and sustainable ecosystems.

The paper presents a conceptual framework based on case studies and literature review describing the methodology and the necessary steps to build sustainable ecosystems.

The paper shows the impact of building social finance ecosystems on tackling social issues. It emphasizes the idea that solving social issues is everybody’s business – from governments to businesses – and that those initiatives require sufficient Sharīʿah-compliant funding to achieve sustainability goals.

The paper does not focus on the Islamic world experiences in building ecosystems serving social causes.

The paper gives an overview on how collaboration between the different social oriented organisations can enhance the social impact of the different initiatives. The aim is to ensure adequate financing to all the ecosystem components during the whole lifecycle.

The suggested approach of building sustainable ecosystems can serve as a way to assess the existing social initiatives and practices to find relevant combinations targeting more impact.

In the social sphere, the idea of building ecosystems has been explored in different ways but never in a way that gathers all the components including finance providers, coordinators and the different types of initiatives. The paper adapts the ecosystem concept to the Islamic finance specificities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the world’s first social impact bond (SIB) and the lessons that can be learned for the Islamic finance industry to fulfil its true objectives.

The Peterborough SIB was recently announced to be successful in achieving its targeted social and investment outcomes, reducing recidivism by 9 per cent and paying back investors a 3 per cent pa return. The paper compares Peterborough SIB with socially responsible investment (SRI) sukuk in terms of form and substance, and finds that there are various lessons from the Peterborough SIB that can be useful for future development of Islamic financial products.

Innovative social financial tools such as SIB exemplify the true spirit of risk sharing and social responsibility, which is arguably missing in current practices of the Islamic finance industry. With the growing interest towards SRI strategies and increase in socially motivated investors, such financial tools may not only help the sustainable growth of the Islamic finance industry, but also fill in the gap between its theory and practice.

As such, the paper also proposes a social impact sukuk model which integrates the key aspects learned from Peterborough SIB. This includes prioritising social impact, measurable success indicators, data and management systems, flexible contracts, third sector integration, risk sharing and fostering the culture of innovation.

The findings can offer some practical insights in dealing with the issue of Islamic finance practice being overly concerned with its formal adherence with Islamic legal rules whilst neglecting its true fundamental values.

To show how social enterprises can take advantage of the growing ethical awareness of financial institutions to finance their work whilst remaining true to their social principles.

The concept of financial intermediation and the growing ethical dimension of financial institutions are discussed to examine the evolving role of ethics within financial intermediation and the opportunities these offer to social enterprises which have hitherto been wary of such finance on principle. Focuses on the fact that many depositors and investors are willing to sacrifice financial return for social results. Reports results of the study, which literature searches and other methods and presents information based on case studies of eight financial intermediaries that provide services to social enterprises and have a strong concern for ethics.

The case studies comprise: Aston Reinvestment Trust (ART), an industrial and provident society; Charity Bank, an FSA regulated bank with a national lending scale; Derby Loans, an industrial and provident society (IPS) and a community development finance institution (CDFI); The Ecology Building Society (EBS), an FSA‐regulated building society with a national lending scale; Industrial Common Ownership Finance (ICOF), a public company limited by guarantee with a national lending scale; London Rebuilding Society (LRS), an IPS with a local lending scale, with borrowers having to be located in London; Triodos Bank, a regulated bank with a national lending scale; and Ulster Community Investment Trust (UCIT), an IPS with a local lending scale limited to specified geographical areas. Concludes that several financial intermediaries now exist that are willing to provide short and long term finance to social enterprises.

Provides valuable information and encouragement for social enterprises seeking finance for their activities.

The purpose of this paper is to bring attention to “entrepreneurial finance education”, an aspect of entrepreneurship education that is widely taught but neglected by the educational literature. It does so by exploring how social capital, a key resource for entrepreneurs, can be incorporated into entrepreneurial finance education.

By drawing upon social capital literature in the context of funding sources for entrepreneurs, the paper highlights the significance of bonding and bridging social capital for entrepreneurial finance.

The review of relevant literature confirms the importance of social capital for entrepreneurial finance. The existence of bonding social capital, which refers to a trusting relationship between entrepreneurs and financiers, allows entrepreneurs to access their financiers’ resources (e.g. contacts, knowledge, reputation, further funds) through bridging social capital.

Students of entrepreneurial finance need to understand the role that both facets of social capital play in the context of fundraising. This paper proposes ways of incorporating social capital into various approaches to entrepreneurial finance education. This allows educators to include relevant topics and research into their syllabi, while enabling students to study a crucial, yet under-represented, topic in entrepreneurial finance education.

Given that entrepreneurial finance education has to date been neglected in the educational literature, this paper begins to address a huge void. It clarifies potential contents of entrepreneurial finance education, demonstrates the importance of including social capital in the education of entrepreneurial finance students and suggests practical ways of achieving this.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which urban social enterprises (SEs) have diversified their funding sources and shifted towards loans and development finance in recent years. The paper seeks to consider the underlying reasons for a limited demand for loans by comparing two theoretical perspectives on SE development. The concept of “social bricolage” implies SEs do not seek conventional business loans or equity finance, because they survive in resource poor environments by improvising and re‐using redundant capital. A second evolutionary approach implies that SE financing will be dominated by a reliance on habits and practices learnt from the contexts in which social entrepreneurs have operated.

The paper is based on analysis of interviews with 40 SEs in four English cities.

The paper finds a limited degree of change and scant evidence of local decentralisation in social enterprises' financial contexts. It argues that both conceptual approaches offer important insights into the causes of the low level of demand for development finance by emphasising the importance of practical and improvised financial management. This is an adaptive response to uncertainty but is also a manifestation of SEs' inherited capabilities in public and charitable finance.

The research is based on a relatively small sample of social enterprises in central and deprived urban areas. The financial practices of social enterprises in other types of environment also require examination.

It is unrealistic to expect the majority of SEs to secure conventional loan finance, instead they require “softer” finance and intensive support from intermediaries.

The paper makes a novel empirical contribution by revealing social enterprises' views and recent experiences with funding. Its approach allows an intensive examination of key financial issues. It makes an original theoretical contribution by seeking to apply, develop, and evaluate two theoretical perspectives on the form and practices of social enterprises.

To study a range of options for providing equity finance (equity capital) in social enterprises.

The UK government’s keenness for social enterprises to overcome the sector’s cultural aversion to borrowing and seek finance for their activities and end grant dependency within the sector is discussed. Considers the different motives of ethical investors and the potentially blurred boundary between what constitutes a social enterprise and what constitutes a private enterprise. Reports on how the Community Interest Companies (CICs), which provides the legal format for social enterprises, has adapted its regulations to pave the way for new forms of equity finance for social enterprises.

It is possible to adapt the rights of ownership identified by Jeff Gates (1998) to provide the basis for equity finance for social enterprises through its attention to liquidation rights, income rights, appreciation rights, voting rights, and transfer rights.

Clarifies some of the aspects involved in equity finance to reveal the potential of this type of finance for social enterprises.

Digital finance is a promising way to realize inclusive finance. However, the determinants of digital finance participation are largely unknown. This study aims to analyze the interface between social interaction and the digital finance participation of rural households and explore potential channels of social interaction to help them access digital finance.

Using rural household survey data from China in 2017, employing the probit, ordered probit and count model, this study assesses the relationship between social interaction and digital finance.

The authors find that active online social interaction of rural households promotes digital finance participation, which also increases the depth and breadth of digital finance usage. Meanwhile, the role of traditional offline social interaction is insignificant. Contextual interaction is the channel through which online social interaction influences digital finance participation. Moreover, word-of-mouth, common topic pleasure and social norms in endogenous interactions are irrelevant. In addition, the role of online social interaction complements offline social interaction at promoting digital finance participation.

This study contributes to the understanding of digital finance by investigating the possible channels by which social interaction influences digital finance participation and highlight an important channel–contextual interaction, especially for online social interaction. This study expands the content of social interaction from traditional offline social interaction to online social interaction to evaluate the interface between social interaction and financial behavior more comprehensively.

In order to fulfill the Shari'ah objective of promoting the welfare of society, institutions offering Islamic financial services (IIFS) are expected to consciously align their decisions and actions so that they are “socially responsible”. An integral policy approach towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) would constitute assigning explicit social objectives to IIFS over and above their economic, legal, Shari'ah, and ethical responsibilities. Alternatively, the task of undertaking socially‐oriented projects could be argued to be a discretionary responsibility of IIFS, with the objective of CSR being sought merely as a peripheral practice. Recent debates on the evolution of the practice of Islamic finance highlighted the profit and economic efficiency motives of IIFS rather than their concern for socio‐economic equity and welfare. A divergence between the economics literature on Islamic finance and the course taken by the practical field of Islamic banking and finance has been argued to be arising over the years. An assessment of this contention motivates this study. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study seeks to assess the corporate social performance (CSP) of a sample of 46 IIFS, located worldwide, which have responded to a questionnaire survey and whose CSR practices have been further verified by content analysis.

The findings revealed that the majority of the Islamic financial practitioners believed in attributing an integrated social role to IIFS. However, the practices of the IIFS reflected a more limited approach to CSR. Most of the IIFS were observed to be focused on meeting their legal, economic and Shari'ah responsibilities, that is, were concerned with the goals of profit maximisation and for their transactions to meet Shari'ah compliance. CSR was practised as a peripheral activity by the IIFS as opposed to being an integral, well thought‐out and deliberate policy decision of management.

If the welfare of Muslim communities and general human well‐being are to be promoted by IIFS – in line with the maqasid al‐Shari'ah – this study questions whether the organisational structure of IIFS should be revisited and be re‐orientated to facilitate their efficient performance in terms of contribution towards social development and human well‐being. The question about the most appropriate business model of the Islamic finance practice that will bring about such a socially responsible outcome is yet to be resolved. This could be an important area for future research.

This study rises to the call of some Islamic researchers who voiced out the need to assess the performance of IIFS vis‐à‐vis their social objectives. The study is among the pioneers to quantify CSR practices of IIFS by conducting an empirical analysis on the CSP of the IIFS.

The first French context of microfinance dates from the 1980's. As a matter of fact, the “grameen bank” model was imported at this time to France by M. Nowak, through her Association for an individual right to undertake: “Association pour le Droit à l'Initiative Economique” (ADIE). But today the domestic landscape of solidarity‐based finance counts plenty of “new” actors, such as: CIGALES, la NEF among others, not to forget intermediated social finance firms: Cooperative banks and public banks with social objectives like the Crédits Municipaux. The purpose of this paper is to show how solidarity‐based finance actors try to supply banking products and services to those who are excluded from access to the banking system and to test the hypothesis of an alternative financial system that is “socially responsible” in articulation with public and private sectors.

A typology of social banking actors is proposed. The nature of responsibility of each actor of this other kind of finance is described.

Social and solidarity‐based economy needs to be recognized by contemporary economics. Solidarity‐based finance shows us that another sustainable development model is possible.

This paper provides incentive to other social economists to continue this work in cooperation.

This chapter uses Islamic finance to question the universality of contemporary finance leading principles. It establishes the existence of different financial paradigms and attempts to determine the form that might take operations in a non-profit maximising context.

This chapter uses Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm to demonstrate that Islamic finance has its own dominant logic and, hence, cannot be reduced to a subset of contemporary finance. It describes how the former has been infused by the leading principles of the latter following the adoption by the Islamic financial field of an accounting system using a conventional referential as a point of reference. Finally, the chapter elaborates on the form that might take financing if profit maximisation is not the operation’s main purpose.

If the condition of profit maximisation is relaxed, the utilisation of Islamic finance instruments might lead to the creation of economical microcycles able to enlarge the socio-economic reach of financing operation.

The notion of economic intermediation is introduced to describe the operations of Islamic banks using their instruments in a non-maximising context. This approach should not be restricted to Islamic finance but viewed as the result of a case study advocating for an alternative view of finance favouring socio-economic development.