Public Sector Abdication and the Coronation of Social Enterprises : How Social Enterprises Become Network Orchestrators in the UK Assistive Technology Industry

The public sector often has to initially provide funding and centralized coordination to assist different social enterprises in an emerging industry that are expected to self-sustain and develop further afterwards. As the public sector gradually pulls its funding and centralized coordination, however, the industry network is likely to evolve, and these social enterprises face rapidly rising social-business tensions due to the persistent demands to provide social benefits and their rising demands to be profitable. This paper offers a theoretical understanding and processual illustration of how social enterprises in the UK assistive technology (AT) industry become network orchestrators and manage rapidly rising social-business tensions in that context. Our findings show how conforming to conventional social benefit provisions and switching between social and business identities and missions can provide a lifeline for the social enterprises to access resources and support, while exploring social beneficiaries’ unutilized capabilities, transforming social beneficiaries into participative network members, and cocreatingboth social benefits and profits can let the social enterprises orchestrate networks and manage rapidly rising social-business tensions, progressively and successfully