Developing a Social Enterprise: An Investigation of Promoters and Barriers

Social enterprise is increasingly discussed in policy documents and academic literature, but there is poor understanding of how social enterprise organisations emerge and develop. A goal of this PhD study was to understand the emergence and nature of social<br/>enterprise, the promoters and barriers to its development in a specific context of the<br/>remote and rural North of Scotland and to investigate the extent to which social<br/>enterprise was being considered for health and care service provision. Giddens’ (1984)<br/>structuration theory provided a theoretical orientation for the work, facilitating analysis of relations between agents and structure.<br/>A qualitative approach to data collection was adopted. Views and perspectives from<br/>different social enterprise stakeholders were elicited. In the first stage of the study,<br/>thirty five individual in-depth face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted; these were verified, confirmed and extended in the second stage of the study through three focus group discussions.<br/>The study contributes new knowledge around promoters and barriers to social<br/>enterprise, considering this from both theoretical and practice-oriented perspectives.<br/>These provide information to help those developing social enterprises. The study is<br/>important in the growing field of social enterprise literature as it adds another<br/>dimension of analysis; that is, findings are viewed through the analytical lens of<br/>structuration theory creating a different way of thinking about how social enterprises<br/>have emerged and the ideas have become fashionable. This element particularly looks<br/>at social enterprise from the perspective of different groups of agents to build<br/>understanding, exploring their influence in social enterprise development. The study<br/>also described the different roles of different types of agents and indicated suggestions regarding changes required in order to further develop the social enterprise sector.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (awarded by OU/Aberdeen)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral Thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Edinburgh

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Steinerowski, Artur

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Farmer, Jane
• Jack, Sarah

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

oai:pure.atira.dk:studenttheses/8fcefbec-cf03-48eb-b534-209b62b4eb4d

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:pure.atira.dk:studenttheses/8fcefbec-cf03-48eb-b534-209b62b4eb4d