With the New Public Management (NPM) reforms, public services are more created through the public policy process, regulated by the government but provided by “public service organisations” (PSOs) existing in or between the... [ view full abstract ]
With the New Public Management (NPM) reforms, public services are more created through the public policy process, regulated by the government but provided by “public service organisations” (PSOs) existing in or between the public, private and third sectors. Social enterprise (SE), as a new type of PSOs, works in line with the government to provide public services. To sustain itself, SE has to balance its income and expenditure through business activities while achieving social missions. Institutionalists assume that SE has internal and external tensions since it combines multiple organisational forms to achieve the dual mission. Nevertheless, questions about what tensions rising from hybridity and how SE can manage these tensions are not sufficiently investigated with empirical studies. Grounded in ecology and ecological studies, resilience is related to an organisation’s ability to return to a stable state and a stable relationship with its environments for persistence after a disruption. Given the fact that SE has the unsolved internal and external tensions while resilience emphasises the stable state and stable relationships with external environments, is resilience achievable for SE? Or does SE necessarily have to maintain the stable state and stable relationships so as to be resilient?
The Scottish Government expects SE to play “a full role in public service reform through a greater involvement in the design and delivery of services”. This research aims to address the gap both in the literature and in the empirical study of whether SEs can achieve resilience. Three research questions are proposed as follows:
- How do environments affect SE’ resilience?
- What strategies does SE adopt to achieve resilience and why?
- Under what contingencies can SE achieve resilience?
This research employed a multiple case study approach with four SEs engaged in employability training services in Scotland. The case studies were concerned with analysing when and why the case SEs have adopted certain strategies and whether these strategies have contributed or undermined their resilience. The preliminary findings showed that the resilience strategies adopted by four cases resulted in diverse consequences. Internal tensions arose in the two social-mission oriented SEs when they implemented strategies to strengthen the business side. The two economic-mission oriented SEs used the SE title to gain credit in public procurements and to fit in large corporates’ Corporate Social Responsibility projects. However, their social missions had been evolving with the business development. Further data analysis is underway to examine SEs’ resilience contingencies.
This research anticipates contributions to the social enterprise literature by proposing a model for understanding what resilience can mean in an SE setting. Second, it aims to advance the understanding of how SEs can achieve resilience with empirical research data. Third, the implications will be discussed in the context of public services delivery to provide the governments and SE supporting bodies with recommendations on how to enhance SEs’ resilience and how to improve their public services delivery.
