Purpose: This paper aims to explore how social enterprises are treated in scholarly research on quasi-markets. In so doing, the paper aims to show that a number of critical knowledge gaps persist which require deeper engagement from researchers, practitioners and policymakers alike....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to outline the findings of a quantitative study of Social Firms between 2006 and 2007. In doing so, it examines the challenges that boards and managers in these organisations face. Design/methodology/approach – In order to test propositions developed...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of the Board of Directors in encouraging entrepreneurship as a strategy for goal achievement among newly formed social purpose organizations. Design/methodology/approach – In the absence of empirical work on board behaviour, a...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the governance of “fair trade social enterprises” (FTSEs), i.e. the organisations exclusively dedicated to the import, distribution and/or labelling of fairly traded products. The aims are to describe and categorise the types of persons and...

Purpose – Prevailing concepts of corporate governance that are based on external shareholder interests have been challenged by a number of authors over the last three decades. The purpose of this paper is to outline the core assumptions of communitarian philosophy and values, together with the...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance of taking into account contextual factors when building governing mechanisms, so that the subsequent processes and structures are appropriate and sustainable. Design/methodology/approach – The paper utilises the singular...

Purpose – In recent years, Japanese co‐operative banks have been attracting new interest among academics and the population generally as institutions through which deprived communities can be revitalized. They have been shown to be capable of promoting both social co‐operation and...

Purpose – Current social entrepreneurship (SE) literature advocates a critical reexamination of the core construct. As such, and based on the seemingly endless definitional debate among academics, this paper seeks to empirically analyse social entrepreneurship discourse in the United Kingdom....

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the prior work on social enterprise (SE) model comparisons by exposing the difficulties in producing universally comparative SE models. Furthermore, this paper seeks to trace different dominant stories of SE based on a combined historical...