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The movement of profit‐orientated corporations into the fair trade value chain has caused some socially orientated fair trade organizations to question the direction the movement is taking. One organization at the forefront of the debate is Trade Aid (NZ), Inc. (hereafter Trade Aid), a New Zealand based socially orientated fair trade organization actively engaged in fair trade since the 1970s. This paper seeks to evaluate how Trade Aid is seeking to reformulate fair trade's vision of empowerment and partnership constructively.

A single case study approach is undertaken to examine how a socially orientated organization is adhering to and seeking to advance fair trade values. This research draws from the global value chain literature, which analyses how industries are governed. The relational co‐ordination or governance mode, which is characteristic of mutual dependency between supplier and buyer firms, is used as a framework for investigating the fair trade industry. Distinction is made between the corporate and social economy variants of the relational governance mode.

Trade Aid's commitment to producer groups is demonstrated through various initiatives the organization is undertaking as they work both with producer groups and corporate actors to expand the fair trade market. Trade Aid is part of a worldwide socially orientated movement seeking to reformulate the vision of fair trade.

To date the fair trade literature has largely focused on socially orientated fair trade organizations in the Northern hemisphere. This research contributes to a gap in the literature in that it examines Trade Aid and the way this organization is addressing mainstreaming.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the findings of a quantitative study of Social Firms between 2006 and 2007. In doing so, it examines the challenges that boards and managers in these organisations face.

In order to test propositions developed from a review of the social enterprise (SE) governance literature, the paper adopts a quantitative, survey‐based approach. The survey compared attitudes to governance issues among managers and board members in the UK‐based Social Firms.

Statistical analysis of the findings highlighted some key outcomes, particularly regarding legitimacy, accountability and stakeholder inclusion of Social Firms Boards. Furthermore, the paper identifies divisions between managers and board members regarding the enterprise‐orientation of Social Firms.

The research adds to current sector debates concerning SE identity, especially related to the effectiveness of governance systems, the erosion of underpinning social values and the adoption of a keener enterprise focus. While the research signals key variables such as legitimacy, accountability and democracy, much larger, qualitative‐based studies are required that capture the voices of more SE boards.

The key practical outcome from this small‐scale study is the difficulty faced by SE practitioners in managing the governance process. There are many forces pulling the SE sector (political, economic and not to mention social) and these undoubtedly have an impact at the grassroots level.

Having drawn conclusions on the key areas of significant difference between internal actors in Social Firms, it is vital not to forget that organisational governance does affect social beneficiaries. In the case of Social Firms, social beneficiaries are also bound together within the fabric of the organisation, forming part of the workforce as well as benefitting from access to employment. This presents problems for SE management, especially when diverging attitudes detract from, rather than enhance, social benefit.

The paper presents some new empirical support for many of the governance challenges facing SE practitioners in the UK. The paper contributes to knowledge by providing support for the debates concerning SE governance, identity and legitimacy.

The success of both London 2012 and Fifteen Cornwall suggest that a focus on legacy can help a company achieve more that is both sustainable and profitable. The idea of putting legacy at the heart of business strategy has also been boosted by recognition that short‐term, profit‐only attitudes have just taken us to the edge of the economic abyss.

Recently The London Times covered the launch of a new management development initiative whose central idea could help redefine business strategies in the twenty‐first century. “Legacy Together” enables business managers to work with and learn from commercially successful social enterprises, and some of the world's most influential business organisations are looking at it closely. But what exactly is “legacy”, and how can it make a business more successful?

London 2012 suggests that legacy is an idea whose time has come and that, for the world beating businesses of the future, success could be measured on a “triple bottom line”: profit, social progress, environmental benefit. Business leaders today have more power than ever to create positive, sustainable change, not just in their own organizations, but in society. If the greatest legacy of the London Olympics is to make us as leaders recognize this, then 2012 truly will have been the greatest show on earth.

Legacy Together concentrates on the collaborative skills needed to achieve outstanding results. To succeed your people need to be able to innovate, and increasingly innovation – which by definition means doing something new – requires collaboration. If you want your people to learn how to collaborate and innovate, they will need to know how to engage with what really matters to them and their collaborators. They will also need to know how to share this with others. Business leaders will need to define what they want their people's “every day legacy” to be.

The purpose of this study is to present a systematic assessment of the distinctive challenges and opportunities associated with creating leadership within the realm of social enterprise. A modified and expanded form of Grint’s leadership lenses heuristic framework (i.e. person, position, process, performance, purpose and place) is used to examine and highlight what is particular about creating leadership in social enterprises by virtue of their distinctive missions, strategic contexts, legal forms and organisational structures and cultures. Based on this initial exploration, five research priorities are identified to better understand and then develop leadership practice in the social enterprise realm.

An enhanced heuristic framework for systematically examining leadership within the social enterprise research literature has been applied, drawing on the leadership practice literature. The application is illustrated through six instrumental case studies.

While there are a number of similarities between leading in the social enterprise realm and leading within the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, the levels of complexity, ambiguity and the lack of an established theoretical and practical knowledge base makes creating leadership in the social enterprise sector that much more challenging. On the positive side of the ledger, the fact that the purpose is at the core of social enterprise means that it is relatively easier to use the purpose to create a basis for common meaningful action, compared to leadership within the private and public sectors. Related to this, given the strongly local or “glocal” nature of social enterprise, a ready opportunity exists for leaders to draw upon a place as a strategic resource in mobilising followers and other stakeholders. The novel, uncertain and pioneering nature of a social enterprise is also arguably more tolerant and accommodating of a leadership mindset that focuses on posing questions regarding “wicked” problems compared to public, private for-profit and, indeed, traditional not-for-profit sector organisations.

As far as we can ascertain, this is the first systematic attempt to examine the distinctive challenges and opportunities associated with creating leadership within the social enterprise realm. The application of the heuristic framework leads to the identification of five key inter-related lines of empirical research into leadership practices within social enterprises.

This study aims to investigate the feasibility of integrating the social, environmental and innovation processes within the four-perspective sustainability balanced scorecard (SBSC) model by determining the extent of linkages between and within the four SBSC perspectives.

A survey collected responses from senior management and middle management of large Australian companies.

The findings support several positive significant associations. Direct associations are found between value-creating processes within the internal process perspective. These results support the feasibility of integrating environmental, social and innovation-orientated value-creating process into the internal process of the four-perspective SBSC model. The results also provide evidence about the extent to which direct or indirect associations exist between the four SBSC perspectives: first, direct association of human capital (learning and growth perspective) with value-creating processes (internal processes perspective); second, direct association of value-creating (internal processes perspective) with customer value (customer perspective); and third, direct and indirect associations of value-creating (internal processes perspective) with financial performance (FP; financial perspective).

Several limitations are acknowledged related to cross-sectional data, senior and middle managers’ perceptions and assumptions underpinning structural equation modelling.

The implications for practice from this study concern how organisational management should relate to their stakeholders while providing value in their FP.

These associations reflect the influence of stakeholders’ recognised needs on process and product innovation. These needs highlight the benefits of focusing on future-orientated environmental budgets and ongoing employee training that lead to customer value and FP.

This is an initial in-depth study of a four-perspective SBSC model that provides an effective means of integrating social, environmental and innovation processes within the traditional four SBSC perspectives.

There is an increasing interest in the area of knowledge management (KM) within organisations and academia. Because of the emergent nature of the field there is a lack of classification of suitable knowledge management models to use in conducting further research, literature evaluation and organisational applications. This paper discusses the definitions and classifications of knowledge management, representing a wide spectrum of views from mechanistic to more socially orientated. An evaluative framework is established from which three knowledge management models can be critically discussed. Three KM model classifications are critiqued, namely knowledge category models, intellectual capital models and socially constructed models. Finally a modified KM model is tentatively suggested to act as a useful guide for further research and organisational application. This model takes a holistic approach to scientific and socially constructed knowledge, assuming the need for both emancipatory and business benefits from KM. The model represents KM as a highly recursive process, rather than sequential.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the discourse that entrepreneurship and enterprise culture are inextricably inter‐twinned with profit‐driven capitalist endeavour by seeking to understand whether amongst some populations, the culture of entrepreneurship is more socially‐oriented than profit‐driven.

To do this, a secondary analysis is undertaken of the results of the UK Global Entrepreneurship Monitor in general, and UK Social Entrepreneurship Monitor more particularly. It compares the levels and ratios of commercial‐to‐social entrepreneurship across various population groups and areas in the UK.

The finding is that there are different cultures of entrepreneurship across varying population groups. Many marginalized groups are more socially‐orientated than profit‐driven. This is particularly the case amongst the long‐term registered disabled (2.3 times more likely to engage in social rather than commercial entrepreneurship than the average UK entrepreneur), other non‐White groups (2.2 times more likely) and the retired (twice as likely). Similarly, people living in rural areas display a greater propinquity to engage in social rather than commercial entrepreneurship than those living in urban areas.

The findings raise questions about whether it is appropriate to parachute into some populations a culture of commercial entrepreneurship that might be “foreign” to their enterprise culture and whether a focus on social entrepreneurship in the enterprise culture agenda will promote greater inclusiveness of populations traditionally under‐represented.

This paper is one of the first to document the varying ratios of commercial‐to‐social entrepreneurship amongst different population groups and areas.

This paper aims to examine the impact of leadership style and team context on structural and psychological empowerment perceptions in project teams.

It was posited that span of control and within team interdependence will positively and significantly influence both structural and psychological empowerment. Person‐orientated leadership style was also expected to positively impact both structural and psychological empowerment while task orientated leadership style was expected to have a negative impact. These hypothesized relationships were examined using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and hierarchical linear modelling (HLM) with data obtained through a parallel quantitative questionnaire survey of construction client, consultant and contractor organizations in Hong Kong.

No significant relationship was found between span of control and any facet of empowerment while team interdependence had a positive and significant relationship with psychological empowerment but not structural empowerment. Task‐orientated leadership was positively and significantly related to psychological empowerment in the full sample and contractor teams but not in consultant and client teams. Person‐orientated leadership was positively and significantly related to psychological empowerment in the full sample, consultant and client teams but not in contractor teams.

The link between leadership style, team context and three facets of empowerment are examined compared with previous studies often focusing on one facet. Sub‐sample analysis enabled more subtle differences of the impact of leadership style in different context to be revealed, an indication that samples may not be homogeneous.