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...

Purpose This paper aims to document the nature of social enterprise models in Australia, their evolution and institutional drivers. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on secondary analysis of source materials and the existing literature on social enterprise in Australia. Analysis was...

Purpose This paper aims to explore the well-being impacts of social enterprise, beyond a social enterprise per se , in everyday community life. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory case study was used. The study’s underpinning theory is from relational geography, including Spaces of...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an Australian case study and to explore how social enterprises may be conceptualised as spaces of well-being, that is the ways in which social enterprises, not explicitly delivering health services, may be producing health and well-being...

Purpose: The social economy – including not-for-profits, cooperatives, mutual organisations and social enterprises – is playing a stronger role than ever in the delivery of public policy. Yet, these organisations are often anecdotally viewed as relatively inefficient providers. The purpose...

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...