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For those who are new to the term "social enterprise", it would be good to read the article as it touches on the fallacies of social enterprises. After 3 years in BZSE and interacting with people from the social sector, I have come to realize that there is no definite answer to the question of "what is a social enterprise". Everyone has their own definition and most might not agree with others.
To summarize the article, it says that it is "conceptually inappropriate to limit the scope of social enterprises" and that "social enterprises must be non-profit organizations" is a false notion.
To me, the word "enterprise" means that it is a business that distributes part of its profit back to its shareholders. That part is easy to understand but adding a "social" in front of it complicate things. "Social" would refer to the social issues that the enterprise is targeting. If you merge both together, it would be a business that targets social issues, while still earning a profit to distribute back to its shareholders. Coinciding with what the article had mentioned, I disagree that social enterprises must be non-profit organizations as I believe that social enterprises should be self-sustainable by the revenue they generate. This means that profit should be given back to the shareholders in order to attract investors like how private businesses work.
A non-profit organization however, can be a social enterprise by having a SE arm to reduce their dependency on public donations and government grants.
My definition of a social enterprise is a business with a social mission that aims to be self-sustainable. What's yours?
Hi Ashlyn! :D
ReplyDeleteMy definition for an SE is to be a business with a heart, that has to survive financially. I agree with the fact that SE is something that doesn't have a definite answer as we all see it differently, maybe not the BZSE students cause' we've been in the same class but the founders of SEs might see it differently. SE definitely are not non-profit orgranizations. They use their products and services to make sure that their beneficiaries get the best from them and that the business is able to survive. They have to compete with the normal businesses to get customers to buy from SE rather than a normal for-profit business and the same time work like them.
So all in all, I agree with what you've said.
Guga :)