In the last few decades, the New Public Management reforms have drastically changed the way how public services are provided. Public services are 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 rather than by the government alone. Social enterprise (SE), as an example of hybrid organisation within PSOs works in line with the government to provide public services in Scotland. Given the fact that SE has the unsolved internal conflict between its social and economic missions, as well as its uncertain interactions with external environments while resilience emphasises the stable state and stable relationships with external environments, is resilience achievable for the SE? Or does the SE necessarily have to maintain the stable state and stable relationships so as to be resilient? In spite that there is a lack of empirical studies into these issues, governments are enthusiastic about SE development. In the present public service reform, the Scottish Government aims to empower the community to take more responsibility in the public services delivery at local level. The Government supports SEs for the purposes of “sustainable economic growth” and playing “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 external environments affect SE’s resilience?
- What strategies does the SE adopt to achieve resilience and why?
- Under what contingencies can the SE achieve resilience?
The SE in the recent context has been seen as a series of enterprising activities or managerial practices, therefore this research will focus on the strategies that affect SE’s resilience in dynamic external environments.
This research consists of exploratory interviews and 4 in-depth SE case studies. The exploratory interviews regard exploring different stakeholders’ perceptions and understandings of SE and SE resilience. They help to generate an empirical description of external environments where SEs in Scotland operate. The case studies concerned with exploring the propositions that emerge from the literature and exploratory interviews. It is equally concerned with analysing when and why the focal SEs adopt certain strategies and whether these strategies contribute or undermine their resilience. Combined with the empirical description of external environments, an initial model of SE resilience contingencies will be proposed.
This research anticipates contributions to the organisational theory by increasing the understanding of resilience in multi-mission organisations in the third sector arena and analysing resilience contingencies in the example of SE. The implications will be discussed in the context of public services delivery, where new types of third sector organisation are involved. It equally attempts to contribute to the existing literature of public management and to the newly emerging literature, such as New Public Governance. Practically, this research aims to help SEs better understand uncertain environments and seize opportunities to be resilient. It also aims to provide the governments and SE umbrella organisations with recommendations to enhance SE resilience and to enhance public services delivery as well.
Main references:
Bhamra, R., Dani, S., & Burnard, K. (2011). Resilience: the concept, a literature review and future directions. International Journal of Production Research, 49(18), 5375-5393.
Chew, C., & Lyon, F. (2012). Innovation and social enterprise activity in third sector organisations (Vol. Working Paper 83). Birmingham: Third Sector Research Centre.
Holling, C. S. (1973). Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 4, 1-23.
Osborne, S. P., & Strokosch, K. (2013). It takes two to tango? understanding the Co‐production of public services by integrating the services management and public administration perspectives. British Journal of Management, 24(S1), S31-S47.
Powell, M., & Osborne, S. P. (2015). Can marketing contribute to sustainable social enterprise? Social Enterprise Journal, 11(1), 24-46.
Walker, B., Holling, C. S., Carpenter, S. R., & Kinzig, A. (2004). Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social--ecological systems. Ecology and society, 9(2), 5.
Young, D. R. (2012). The State of Theory and Research on Social Enterprises. In B. Gidron & Y. Hasenfeld (Eds.), Social Enterprises: An Organizational Perspective (pp. 19-46). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Young, D. R., Kerlin, J. A., Teasdale, S., & Soh, J. I. (2012). The Dynamics and Long Term Stability of Social Enterprise. In J. Kickul & S. Bacq (Eds.), Patterns in social entrepreneurship research. Cheltenham UK and Northampton MA: Edward Elgar.
6. Institutionalization, scaling up and public policies
