The ‘revolution’ in social enterprise is much wider and more radical than traditional definitions allow for, argues Geof Cox FRSA.
The articles on social enterprise by Geoff Mulgan and others in the summer edition of the RSA Journal raise some good questions about whether social entrepreneurs are fulfilling their potential. They also provide a welcome antidote to the usual pre-perestroika-Pravda flavour of much writing in this area, which only tells the good news! However, the pieces also miss a more fundamental question about the adequacy of the usual conceptual frameworks for analysis of what is really happening in social enterprise.
This issue first opens up around the vexed question of how many 'social enterprises' there really are. The truth is that there is an 'official' social enterprise 'sector' that continues to propagate the figures quoted in the articles: that there are 60,000 to 70,000 social enterprises in the UK. But in addition to this there is a much larger social enterprise movement of at least a third of a million people and organisations actively using business models and methods to achieve a social mission.
The recent Third Sector Research Centre work on measuring the scale of UK social enterprise is helpful in addressing the political construction of the 'social enterprise' concept.
Moreover, the most recent UnLtd survey found that if they had access to the right support about one in three people would like to be social entrepreneurs; a startling figure, but tellingly close to Dr Rebecca Harding's research on the numbers of social entrepreneurs. This suggested some time ago that there are over 230,000 'hidden social enterprises' in the UK, and that over a third of all new entrepreneurs would like to be social entrepreneurs.
The key point here is that the 'official' social enterprise sector is based on the dated model of 'the firm', rather than the new reality of the network, on mitigating market failure rather than developing a whole new way of organising human affairs, and on conventional business growth models rather than the now rather more pressing issue of the limits to growth.
We have to shift to a new paradigm. This means shifting focus from the relatively small number of social enterprises that happen to fit an official definition, or can be used to forward a government agenda, towards the much larger movement of alternative lifestyle businesses, portfolio workers, organisations with or without staff, activists, freelancers and networks working not to redeliver public services but in more challenging and more internationally relevant areas like the environment, local food, fair trade and the open source movement.
In this context Geoff Mulgan's count of recent social enterprise disappointments looks plain old-fashioned. The conventional idea of business 'growth' is precisely what most social entrepreneurs are trying to get away from. Not only because the coming adjustment of our whole economy has to be towards buying, transporting and using much less, but also because the big bland brands world of globalised business, cloned high street and remote call-centre robs us of real human contact, value and fulfillment.
The networked home worker, not driving into an energy-hungry office or factory every day, taking some time to shop locally and cook some slow food, spend time with the kids, get involved in their community and focus on well-being instead of growth; they are not going to be social enterprise celebrities, for sure, but they might nevertheless be driving more radical change.
If this sounds to you like a 'place in the country' idyll, please note that I'm working with precisely this kind of social enterprise network among, for example, people with learning disabilities in the UK, and women house-bound by caring responsibilities in an all-but closed-down former closed town in northern Russia.
The really important questions here are about how social enterprise networks can replace conventional investment, whether we can achieve economies of scale while empowering local people and communities, how we can freely share knowledge but retain our originality, and how sharing can reduce our need for hundreds and hundreds more things that don't really make us happy.
And we need to develop an entirely new brand-paradigm for this kind of social enterprise: one that will propagate brands that are participative and community-owned, that are about collaborating more and consuming less, and that can combine the trust in the familiar that drives conventional brands with a new respect for the unique and the local and the individual.
These are profoundly challenging questions that cannot be resolved with the usual business strategy tools, and that are rarely broached in social enterprise circles. I wonder if the range of skills and experience in an organisation like the RSA might better help us make the paradigm shift social enterprise really needs?
Geof Cox is a freelance social enterprise developer currently working on a number of ground-breaking projects, including a new fair trade model for hard-pressed families with Oxfam in Russia, and the UK-wide roll-out of the miEnterprise supported self-employment network for people with disabilities or other barriers to paid work.
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Thank you for this really inspiring article. I really couldn't agree more on the paradigm shift. I have been preaching this here in Finland for so long that we really need to shift our focus to much more wider perspective...
Why is it that when the reductionists take hold of something from Heart and Soul (Bread and Beer come to mind) they hijack the words and we have to insert the adjective "Real" to take it back ......?
Come to that, why "Social" Enterprise in the first place?
Perhaps Enterprise's default could be social and if you are driven by money you could use an adjective like "Greedy" or something?
Geoff I’ve contemplated for some time now on whether we should distinguish between
true ‘social enterprise’ and the ‘social economy – the latter being all those ‘enterprises’ that exist only for the (subsidised) purpose of delivering public services for central or local government.
Incidentally, it’s also to be noted that such public services will be contracted out for delivery in the style, format and ways (and perhaps price) determined by government - and only to those deemed eligible by government. It get’s increasingly difficult to perceive where the locus of ‘social’ is in ‘social enterprise, in such a contractual arrangement.
Geoff, IMO, what I have just said is consistent with how you asserted:
"The key point here is that the ‘official’ social enterprise sector is based on the dated model of ‘the firm’, rather than the new reality of the network, on mitigating market failure rather than developing a whole new way of organising human affairs, and on conventional business growth models rather than the now rather more pressing issue of the limits to growth."
As Sday posted above, "social enterprise is more than the third sector saddled up to deliver public sector contracts and more than public sector teams rebadged."
Here in Scotland. The inestimable Laurence Demarco in his SENSCOT ezine warned of the social enterprise sector becoming a "subset of the private sector". He quoted from a recent Morning Star report about "the major private heath care provider 'Circle'; by virtue of being 49% owned by its employees it calls itself a 'social enterprise'. But Circle is 51% owned by some very profit hungry private investors - just one subsidiary in a complex corporate structure that spans the Virgin Isles and Jersey."
Again here in Scotland, officialdom some time ago ducked the whole issue of definitions and suggested we should instead speak of ‘the characteristics’ of social enterprise - quite pointless as it just moves us in the domain of debate about characteristics instead of about definitions.
(Apologies for any duplication of this comment. This is my second attempt as the first comment didn't seem to 'connect').
Geoff I’ve wondered for some time now on whether we should distinguish between
‘social enterprise’ and the ‘social economy' – the latter being all those ‘enterprises’ that exist only for the (subsidised) purpose of delivering public services for central or local government.
Incidentally, it’s also to be noted that such public services will be contracted out for delivery in the style, format and ways (and perhaps price) determined by government - and only to those deemed eligible by government. It get’s increasingly difficult to perceive where the locus of ‘social’ is in ‘social enterprise, in such a contractual arrangement.
Geoff, IMO, what I have just said is consistent with how you asserted:
"The key point here is that the ‘official’ social enterprise sector is based on the dated model of ‘the firm’, rather than the new reality of the network, on mitigating market failure rather than developing a whole new way of organising human affairs, and on conventional business growth models rather than the now rather more pressing issue of the limits to growth."
As Sday posted above, "social enterprise is more than the third sector saddled up to deliver public sector contracts and more than public sector teams rebadged."
Here in Scotland. The inestimable Laurence Demarco in his SENSCOT ezine warned of the social enterprise sector becoming a "subset of the private sector". He quoted from a recent Morning Star report about "the major private heath care provider 'Circle'; by virtue of being 49% owned by its employees it calls itself a 'social enterprise'. But Circle is 51% owned by some very profit hungry private investors - just one subsidiary in a complex corporate structure that spans the Virgin Isles and Jersey."
Again here in Scotland, officialdom some time ago ducked the whole issue of definitions and suggested we should instead speak of ‘the characteristics’ of social enterprise (quite pointless as it just moves us into the domain of debate about characteristics instead of about definitions).
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/edw...
I am in fact writing now from a 'place in the country' and by
coincidence it was a former closed town in Russia where I first learned
of social enterprise, from an American who went there to do it in 1999.
Reporting of women with caring responsibilities he wrote:
"There were also critical food
shortages in the region, children living on the streets because they
considered orphanages intolerable, women having to resort to
prostitution to feed their children, and a near-total lack of new
economic opportunities. Economic opportunities for women were
routinely negotiated in bed, if at all. "
It was here in what became known as the Tomsk Regional Initiative that
he persuaded US government to try a localised approach which was
replicated by them in other cities.
Yesterday morning I learned of his death in service, where the cause of
children abandoned to state care took priority over his health.
In the paper he wrote for Clinton's re-election in 1996, he'd asserted
that 'the emerging Information Age will provide an unprecedented
opportunity for outreach and communication at local community
levels by way of the Internet' and that was the message brought to the
UK in 2004, with a proposal for replication on a national scale:
http://forestofdean.socialgo.c...
In this post growth model , the 20th century production and profit
maximising approach to economics gives way to one which is sharing and
people-centered and that's how it's been deployed here:
http://forestofdean.socialgo.c...
Could it be, that until now, it hadn't really been understood?