Social Enterprise Recommendations Overview

1. Future analysis, especially in different countries, can make important contributions to opening the ‘black box’ of social entrepreneurs’ decision-making. Hopefully, this study provides a building block for a stream of social entrepreneurship research and suggests useful pathways for further work on how social entrepreneurs steer their way through multiple institutional environments, while pursuing social and commercial goals.

1. Reduce social policy deficits and make the social economy more sustainable.

2. One possible option for attracting more private capital to the social economy would be to impose a statutory limit on the amount of residual capital that may be extracted by a firm’s participants upon a conversion or a winding up at the outset. Each year the legislation could draw down the limit. For example, the figure could be set at 65-70 per cent initially. This could be reduced annually and incrementally until, after, perhaps, ten years, a firm’s participants would only be required to leave a small percentage of the remaining assets behind (e.g., 10 per cent). The drawdown feature could potentially appeal to a broader demographic of social entrepreneurs and investors interested in both social value creation and long-term financial returns, but it could also, gradually, lock more capital into the social economy.

Effective ways to enhance accountability are central to social enterprises’ legitimacy, particularly as the sector continues to grow. While social enterprise is a nascent field, as the sector matures, established norms will emerge. However, if no reporting is an accepted norm, and the broader public is not considered ‘‘relevant’’ to social enterprises’ reporting, the legitimacy of the sector and its potential contribution may not be realised to effectively address the intended social issues.

Effective ways to enhance accountability are central to social enterprises’ legitimacy, particularly as the sector continues to grow. While social enterprise is a nascent field, as the sector matures, established norms will emerge. However, if no reporting is an accepted norm, and the broader public is not considered ‘‘relevant’’ to social enterprises’ reporting, the legitimacy of the sector and its potential contribution may not be realised to effectively address the intended social issues.

Future research exploring other mechanisms of accountability will provide further insights into an area of limited understanding and research. Effective ways to enhance accountability are central to social enterprises’ legitimacy, particularly as the sector continues to grow. While social enterprise is a nascent field, as the sector matures, established norms will emerge. However, if no reporting is an accepted norm, and the broader public is not considered ‘‘relevant’’ to social enterprises’ reporting, the legitimacy of the sector and its potential contribution may not be realised to effectively address the intended social issues.

1. Policymakers can motivate universities to offer courses that can facilitate the development of interest towards social entrepreneurship.

1. In this study the sample size is not sufficient for generalisation of the results and especially restricted to nascent social entrepreneurs. More purposeful sampling of social entrepreneurs and social ventures are recommended as they would help research in this area.

2. A longitudinal research study identifying the full journey of social venture creation can provide more accurate results.

1. Further explore whether the relations between actor characteristics, strategic choices and impact are linear.

2. Time must be taken into consideration as well in future research, as speed seems to be related to structure choice and we do
not know to what extent strategic choices could change over time.

3. Further exploration of the framework in a specific branch or specific topic, like social initiatives in healthcare or sustainable initiatives in the food industry.This will help to explore the different relations and dynamics in the framework more in detail.