Talk:Social enterprise

Addition to awards?

Fast Company now does the 2008 Social Capitalist Awards, and I thought of this when I read your page: http://www.fastcompany.com/social/2008/index.html 132.174.194.95 (talk) 19:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Definition

Social enterprise is a phenomenon with at least two conflicting definitions. To Ashoka, Social Entrepreneurship is solving social problems entrepreneurially. Ashoka interprets a social enterprise as organization with a social mission that is either for-profit or with a profit generating component. To the Social Enterprise Alliance it is a non profit using earned income to fulfill part of its mission because of the inneficiency of the non profit capital market. These are related topics, but mean different things to different people. A social enterprise, is a non profit that has a revenue stream from the sale of goods or services. social entrepreneurship is more of a movement. They are related but not the same.

• The current definition seems circular. One problem is that the word "social" alone can be interpreted different ways, so using "social" in the definition is problematic right away. Generally this page needs to be streamlined and cleaned up: For example: why is there a mention of Russia as a root of the North American experience? The fact seems to come out of left field. DeweyQ (talk) 12:18, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Merging Social Enterprise/Entrepreneur

I agree that Enterprise and Entrepreneur should not be merged. But Social Entrepreneur should be a subset of the Social Enterprise entry. The definition of a social enterprise should be expanded to include a requirement that "nearly all" or "all" of the revenue is derived from trading. Otherwise, it's simply the trading arm of a charity. Social enterprises, in order to be considered a 3rd economy must be defined by this trait. It is this merging of private and non-profit which makes them unique.

Prospective merger

I would keep them separate. Social entrepreneurs are not managers of social enterprises, and the organisations they found and start up are not necessarily social enterprises as narrowly defined by parts of the entry / the comment above. Social entrepreneurs tend to be interested in outcomes not process: they don't care so much how they achieve their goals (legal structure / income generation / distribution of profits/surplus etc.) as long as they do. There are obviously connections between the two entries: social entrepreneurs do use what have been considered traditionally as more commercial 'business' methods, and are more opportunistic, risk-taking etc., and many of them found social enterprises (depending on your definition, of course). I write this from a more UK perspective, but I would agree with the top comment above: keep them separate, but linked. However, in response to the comment above, as social entrepreneurship is the wider movement, social enterprise should, if anything, be a subset of its entry, not the other way round.

Distinctive differences and popular usages

The phrase "social entrepreneur" is currently popular among philanthropists, NGOs, and academics as a distinct form of civic engagement. This usage signifies an important difference with the phrase "social enterprise", which is neither a common or supported usage among the professional communities which purport to conduct these efforts. I would move to keep them as individual entries.

Very different

Look at the classical definition of "entrepreneurship" as economists define it - it's an individual's reorganization of existing resources that radically improves the rate of return on those resources. Looking at that root, we would conclude that a social entrepreneur is someone who does this in a way that improves the rate of return for society. Social enterprise, on the other hand, refers to the blurring of business and nonprofit boundaries, especially in terms of using business practices to generate income for the organization. Consider this, classic social entrepreneurs such as Florence Nightingale or Martin Luther did not run social enterprises.

---

I would agree that the two are different - primarily because I've known about the 'social entrepreneurship' business for about 3 years now and I've not once heard of the term 'social enterprise'. ----shmooth- 08:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Do not combine: related, but distinctly different

Agree with most of the comments, except for the first comment about subsets. In the U.S. context, social enterprise is more often considered a subset of social entrepreneurship, and not the other way around. However, this is a nit that doesn't affect the question of merger. Don't merge: distinct difference is that there are many respected social entrepreneurs that do not engage in enterprise activities.

Merge

My point is separate from the discussion on merging Social enterprise and Social entrepreneur. I think that this article should be merged with Social business. These two articles share a lot of the same information, and I think the distinction between a "Social Business" and a "Social Enterprise" is just semantics.

Reziztor (talk) 22:46, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Social Business

While I see no real distinction to be made between social enterprise and social entrepreneur, social business on the other hand has been used to convey a business model which does not include mutuals and voluntary orgs. Muhammad Yunus has his own definition, Social Business Enterprise or SBE. A CIC for example could be described as a social business as could our own P-CED model, which is profit for social purpose. There's an interesting recent reference to this kind of approach, in the Papal encyclical of July 2009.

'This is not merely a matter of a “third sector”, but of a broad new composite reality embracing the private and public spheres, one which does not exclude profit, but instead considers it a means for achieving human and social ends. Whether such companies distribute dividends or not, whether their juridical structure corresponds to one or other of the established forms, becomes secondary in relation to their willingness to view profit as a means of achieving the goal of a more humane market and society' —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jeff.mowatt (talk • contribs) 19:53, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Removed self promotion and unsupported claims made by User Jeff Mowatt who has been using Wikipedia to promote his own business activities. Jeff Mowatt is a business associate/director of a company titled "People-Centered Economic Development". The company was de-registered in 2005 only to be re-registered under then same name and address by Jeff Mowatt. Wikipedia undertook a review and removed publications as they did not conform with Wikipedia's guidelines. Mr Mowatt's business activities and various claims a have been questioned. No indeoendent referres or citation can be found to verify the claims that he and his associate Terry Hallman are true. claims that he his asscoiated with US President Bill Clinton are dubious are as the claims of any involvement in successful projects in Russia or Ukraine. All citations referred to were self published by Mr Mowatt or his associates. Mr Hallman was expelled from Russia in 2002 and later expelled from the UK in 2005 when he was declared an economic migrant Both Mr Hallman and Mr Mowatt travelled to Ukraine in wife. 124.190.40.8 (talk) 05:20, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

more information P-CED.blogspot.com

India

The following was posted by 122.172.87.9 in the article at the opening of the section on India, but is more appropriate to this page:

I do not think this definition is correct. NGO's cannot be considered to be social enterprises. The below text also contradicts the definition made above in the article "Social enterprises are generally held to comprise the more businesslike end of the spectrum of organisations that make up the third sector or social economy. A commonly-cited rule of thumb is that their income is derived from the business trading rather than from subsidy or donations."