Social Enterprise Case Study

QUESTIONS:

1. How would you define a social enterprise?

It is widely known to all that social enterprise is used to mean a unit of business, traditional enterprise provides value for their customers and shareholders, while social enterprise is driven by social goals, creating societal wealth for the society (Chalmers, D. and Fraser, S. 2012).

Therefore, lots of scholars tend to explain it from the aspect of why it is social instead of private, according to Mulgan, G. (2006), the whole organisation and activities are aim to their social mission, which is devoted to solving a series of social problems, such as helping disadvantaged groups, conducting fair trade, etc., as well as environmental issues like sustainable development. However, this

What are the three different funding models for Social Enterprise and how do they work in practice?

In fact, social missions represent social values that enterprises convey whilst finance sources reflect business models of enterprises. Relationships between money and social missions play significant roles, which intertwines in the social enterprises and differentiates social enterprise into three types, respectively, embedded social enterprise, integrated social enterprise and external social enterprise (Alter. S. K. 2006).

Firstly, based on the theory of Alter. S. K, (2006), when business activities and social tasks are highly compatible, the social progammes that conducted by the social enterprise are exactly the business activities, this enterprise is known as embedded social enterprise. The social enterprises operate the social task as their business mission, earning profits from them and directly promote the social projects, accordingly, achieving self-financing and solving social problems. Meanwhile, the target customer group, owners and employees in the enterprise are direct beneficiaries of the social projects. For example, a social enterprise in my hometown call Shenzhen Canyou group co.LTD, this enterprise aims to provide jobs for socially vulnerable groups graduate from college, namely the disadvantaged college graduates, their business includes animation, software development, providing them with sustainable health care and wages

6. How can the relative levels of Social Enterprise in different countries be explained?

According to the theory of Kerlin, J, A. (2010), it compares the concepts, and context of social enterprises in seven regions and countries of the world including Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, the United States, Zimbabwe and Zambia, Argentina and South-East Asia. The article emphasizes that the differences in the socio-economic context seem to explain the international differences in social enterprise, this explains why development levels of social enterprise vary across regions and countries.

There are four factors, respectively, civil society, countries, markets and international assistance, affected the emergence and traits of social enterprises in seven regions and countries. Also, Kerlin analyse the socioeconomic environment for social enterprise for seven regions, and the relationship between social enterprise model as well as the socioeconomic environment.

Figure 4 Comparative overview of social enterprise models and four factors for 7 regions and