Book Review: Heather Douglas and Suzanne Grant (Eds),Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise: Concepts in Context

Issues of parsimonious academic theories, ground-level practitioner pragmatism and policymaker fickleness intersect in Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise: Concepts in Context. The absence of clearly delineated definitions and boundaries for social entrepreneurship and social enterprise has been open to debate for over 20 years. What will be of particular interest is the way the editors have framed this discourse conceptually and contextually in Australia and New Zealand.

A Social Entrepreneurship Theory Symposium organised by Heather Douglas was held in 2012, which was the first time scholars studying social entrepreneurship (SEship) in Australia and New Zealand met to discuss SEship and the growing number and diversity of social enterprises (SEprises). This volume is a result of their theory framing conversations and subsequent research exploring the third sector in Australia and New Zealand. The contributors to the book present a broad array of interdisciplinary theoretical approaches, propose varied methodologies to test and examine theoretical insights and introduce contextually diverse geographic and demographic areas to validate their tenets at macro-, meso- and micro-levels.

The foreword written by Janelle Kerlin, an international scholar and researcher on social enterprise, sets the stage by indicating the importance of the book in advancing a deeper and broader theoretical discussion and baseline for research in the nations studied. As Kerlin notes, the book seeks to answer critical questions about social entrepreneurship and enterprise: ‘What is it, where is it, and how can we harness it so that it does the most good in addressing the problems of humanity?’ (p. xxi).

Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise: Concepts in Context consists of 18 chapters arranged into four parts, namely, Part I: The Discipline of Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise; Part II: Concepts in Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise; Part III: Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprise: Research in Context; and Part IV: Postscript. All of the chapters follow a general format: overview, conceptual framing, review of literature, contextual framing, methodology, findings and discussion, conclusion and list of references. The major strengths noted are as follows: tight editing; varied, well written and easy to follow chapters; and excellent and extensive list of references.

The first two chapters of Part I written by the editors provide a good overview of the dissonance in the debate for a rigorous research-grounded meta-theoretical framework that can provide legitimacy to the field and sound guidance to practitioners. They, however, advocate taking an approach that broadens our knowledge of conceptual dimensions. The subtitle of second chapter indicates that the major focus of the book is ‘Seeking theories to illuminate social entrepreneuring’—ones that expand the micro- and macro-purview of scholars and practitioners; theories that will deepen our understanding of comparable and contrasting contextual dimensions in unexplored venues. Adopting varied conceptual frameworks from a range of disciplines and diverse contextual settings can provide scholars with new insight. Douglas (Chapter 2) presents a single case to show how three theories for different levels of analysis can be used to demonstrate the complex domain of SEship—communicative action (micro), collective action (meso) and activity theory (macro). The case gives credence to the value of introducing new perspectives to explain the complex nature of SEship instead of using a business perspective with its Anglo-American and European focus.

The eight chapters of Part II address the need to widen our understanding of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ in SEship and SEprise, especially where gaps in scholarship exist such as the conceptualisation of various SEship and SEprise themes including identity, legitimacy and power. Several authors focus on advancing SEship and SEprise theory based on existing approaches. Grant and Dart (Chapter 5) examine SEship and SEprise as a socially constructed organisational identity. Ruebottom and McKague (Chapter 6) present a dialectical social theory model to understand the opposing legitimacy tensions faced by SEship seeking system change. Partzsch (Chapter 7) addresses the individual power of social entrepreneurs, emphasising that it resides primarily on power with others (cooperation and learning) to produce a win–win outcome rather than power over others (coercion and manipulation) to produce a winner/loser zero sum outcome.

A number of chapters examine SEship in relation to government and governing including neoliberalism and the demise of the welfare state which often takes place under the guise of austerity and economic crises. Pascal Dey (Chapter 3) builds on Foucault’s art of governing to showcase the conflicting and contradictory relationship between the power and subjectivity involved in governing the social through SEship. Pathak (Chapter 4) critiques SEship, ‘governmentality’ and advanced liberal societies. He argues that SEship has the ability to challenge the dominant capitalist model. As counterpoint to a market perspective, he contends that ‘social impact can be understood from an ecological perspective as the result of a supply chain of services’ (p. 83). This facilitative approach can counter the state’s withdrawal of involvement in growth of the social economy. The state might then ‘return to the social through policy interventions geared towards enhancing the environment of social entrepreneurship’ (p. 75).

De Bruin and Stangle (Chapter 8) discuss SEprise scaling and its impact on mitigating social problems using the economic framework of multiple equilibria. This integrative conceptual approach captures the range of SEprise scaling and bridges the closely allied domains of SEship and social innovation. In ninth chapter, Tedmanson examines the contribution of SEprise development in building community resilience within remote indigenous communities of central Australia. These illustrate that innovative, collaborative and kinship patterns found among indigenous people can convert culture into renewable SEship capital. Kahurangi Dey and Grant (Chapter 10) examine SEprise in the context of the Māori people. Although embedded in a neoliberal, competitive and individual-oriented New Zealand economy, the SEprise activities of Māori communities have developed a way to capture cultural influences of traditions and ideology. Simply stated, Māori have uniquely developed SEprise as ‘another way of doing things’.

The seven chapters in Part III explore SEship and SEprise in the context of several developed and developing countries. Mandinyenya and Douglas (Chapter 11) studied local influences on SEprise start-ups in Cambodia. The findings show that a lengthy, unhurried and co-creation process counters the dominant business model that is fast-paced, orchestrated and led by an individual ‘heroic’ entrepreneur. Gawell and Westlund (Chapter 12) examined Sweden with its large public sector history. They discuss theories of SEship and civil society as well as how these are connected to the organisation of welfare societies. Brady and Haugh (Chapter 13) offer an in-depth look at the structure, content and context of formal and informal practitioner interactions for business information and enterprise support that exist in social entrepreneur networks in Britain and Turkey. Contextual differences show the importance of practitioner networks in Britain and political networks in Turkey. Using two international SEprises, Ruebottom and Toubiana (Chapter 14) investigated the symbolic and strategic role that ‘foreign’ language plays in facilitating social change across national boundaries.

Ormiston and Seymour (Chapter 15) examine the influence of government policies on social financing and the emerging social investment market in Australia. Their exploratory study on the nature of exchange and collaboration within the market suggests that social investment may be a ‘moral system of exchange’ that has implications for other nations. Eversole (Chapter 16) focuses specifically on the Australian state of Tasmania. Her research identifies SEprise as a ‘counterwork’ vehicle, challenging mainstream paradigms (modernisation theory, capitalistic econ-centric and top–down by professionals) as the only catalysing approaches for social and economic development and change. She states, ‘At a basic level, this kind of counterwork can be observed in the intentional positioning of “social enterprise” as a category of organisation that crosses over traditional sectoral categories—market, community, and state’ (p. 338). Cameron and Hendriks (Chapter 17) begin by discussing how Australia’s development of the SEprise sector has been influenced by ‘policy borrowing’ especially from the UK. They conducted an exploratory study of Australian local level SEprise practitioners using a focus group and several one-on-one interviews. Their narratives challenge the ‘grand narrative’ and offer ‘counter narratives’ and ‘little narratives’ and include negative comments on the current dominance of using business models to address Australia’s social issues. The practitioners give voice to the reality that social goals and business/commercial goals are not easily balanced—whatever is maximised minimises the other. Social entrepreneurship theory, research and practice, can become ‘path dependent’ due to the dominance of a conceptual perspective, approach, paradigm or model.

Part IV is a postscript chapter written by international social entrepreneurship scholar Alex Nicholls—professor of social entrepreneurship in the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. In assessing SEship in a world filled with paradoxes and complexity coupled with institutionalising idiosyncrasy and sectoral asymmetry, Nicholls writes:

Thus, the boundary blurring so typical of social entrepreneurship may be both a manifestation of, and a response to, the institutional material of an increasingly post-paradigmatic world. Such a landscape is increasingly set loose from any clear ideological moorings after the collapse of communism in the 1990s and disillusionment with its dominant alternative—a blind neo-liberal market credo—post the 2008 global financial crisis. One of the more challenging conceptualisations of social entrepreneurship, for example, draws upon the long established co-operative and mutual traditions to cast it as pro-market but anti-capitalist. (p. 365 italic in original)

Nicholls concludes, ‘there seems to be evidence of field-level paradigm resistance and manipulation in social entrepreneurship’ (p. 367). Perhaps, there is no end to the search for the perfect SEship paradigm. However, as he stated, ‘The collection of concepts and contexts discussed in this book can make a useful contribution towards this new social entrepreneurship and enterprise research agenda in terms of its own, illuminating, analysis of a particular, dynamic, regional context’ (pp. 367–368).