Understanding social enterprise models in South Africa: Preliminary findings from the ICSEM project

As a field of inquiry social enterprise seems to have gained momentum in the last decade or two. While the field has gained scholarly momentum, there is still limited knowledge of social enterprise models as they are emerging... [ view full abstract ]

As a field of inquiry social enterprise seems to have gained momentum in the last decade or two. While the field has gained scholarly momentum, there is still limited knowledge of social enterprise models as they are emerging across the world. This is especially true with regard to social enterprise in sub-Sahara Africa, which, to present, still remains largely under-researched and under-theorised. The present paper aims at partly filling that important gap by looking at models of social enterprise in South Africa.
So far much of our still limited knowledge and understanding of social enterprise in sub-Sahara Africa (as for many other places across the globe) has been relying on qualitative case studies, which highlight a certain aspect of social enterprise or social entrepreneurship. While these studies are important to our understanding of the phenomenon, many scholars inside and outside the EMES community have called for more quantitative approaches to understanding social enterprise and moving the field forward from its embryonic state. As such one of the main aims of the International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project is to analyse and understand the diversity of social enterprise models now emerging across the world.
The present study presents the preliminary findings of the ICSEM project in South Africa. In total, 42 structured interviews were conducted with managers or directors working for a variety of organisations with different legal incorporations (voluntary associations, trusts, non-profit companies, coops, etc.) using the ICSEM questionnaire. As no reliable directories of social enterprise exist in South Africa, organisations were purposively sampled through key informant interviews and snowball referrals in order to have the largest possible cross-sections of organisations. The data was mainly collected in and around the city of Port Elizabeth in the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Bay in the Eastern Cape province.
Some of the limitations of the study relate to its exclusive focus on one province and the reliance on non-randomised sampling techniques. Another problem that complicated our empirical research on the field, is the absence of a common understanding of the notion of social enterprise in the field due to the relative newness of the concept in South Africa. We believe, however, that this paper still makes a strong contribution, not only to the ICSEM project, but to the wider literature on social enterprise in general by providing empirical evidence about some of the main common characteristics that define social enterprises operating in the South African institutional context.