Sustainable Social Enterprise Entrepreneurship. (ePub)

In terms of a theoretical rationale for my PhD study, terms such as 'social enterprise' and 'social entrepreneurship' are often considered pre-paradigmatic and ill-defined (Haugh, 2005; Nicholls, 2006; Ridley-Duff and Bull, 2009; Bridge et al., 2009; 2010; Mason, 2012; Conway Dato-on and Kalakay, 2016). This presents a clear conceptual motivation for undertaking a qualitative social science PhD, i.e. one that contributes to a deeper understanding of the organisational identity and governance characteristics of social enterprises, as part of the UK third sector. I am also interested in investigating who and what makes (UK) social enterprises 'sustainable' in uncertain economic times. Put simply, there are multiple and conflicting definitions of what constitutes as a sustainable 'social firm', 'social enterprise', 'social entrepreneurship', 'social entrepreneur', and so on (Nicholls, 2010; Mason, 2012). There are also definitional ambiguities at a more philosophical level - for example, what constitutes the terms 'social value' and 'social value creation' in relation to the growth of social enterprise(s) and the (UK) third sector (Lautermann, 2013). Ontologically, there have been recent calls for deconstructing idealised views of social enterprise, some of which suggest social value is only sustainable if organisations are, or become more commercial (Steyaert and Hjorth, 2003; Thompson and Doherty, 2010; Dey and Steyaert, 2012; Doherty et al., 2014). Determining how the traditional values of altruism, charity, volunteering, societal wellbeing etc, fit within a social entrepreneurial identity discourse still remain underresearched (Jones et al., 2008; Maclean et al., 2015)