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The social enterprise literature is dominated by stories of good practice and heroic achievement. Failure has not been widely researched. The limited policy and practice literature presents failure as the flipside of good practice. Explanations for failure are almost wholly individualistic, and related to poor governance. However, organisational studies literature shows that failure cannot be understood without reference to the wider environment within which organisations operate. This paper is based on a nine year in depth case-study of an organisation previously characterised in the policy and practitioner literature as an example of good practice and heroic achievement. We seek to explain its 'failure' through studying the interaction between the organisation and its wider environment. We show that simple individualistic explanations are not sufficient by which to understand social enterprise failure and outline the implications for academic understanding of social enterprise.

This paper reports the findings of an intensive study of the funding experience of a small sample of voluntary agencies in the north of England. It shows that the income of the sample organisations increased from just over £ Im in 1989-90 to just over £2m in 1993-94, with statutory funding becoming a larger proportion of total income. The paper looks at changing patterns of funding. at reasons for greater or less success in securing funding. and at the costs offunding success to the organisation. Through a case study approach it explores and explains the paradox of financial growth and constraint. Cet article presente les donnees d'une etude intensive sur I'experience de financement d'un petit echantil/on d'organisations benevo/es dans Ie nord de I'Angleterre. /I indique que /es revenus de I'echantillon d'organisations ont augmente d'un peu plus de {I m en /989-90 a un peu plus de £2m en /993-94, dont une plus importante proportion venait du financement statuaire. L'article considere I'evolution des styles de financement, les raisons de reussite ou d'echec, et Ie coat a I'organisation de la reussite en financement. A I'aide d'une approche basee sur I'etude de cas,l'article explore et explique Ie paradoxe de 10 croissance economique et 10 contrainte.

tion-option operating windows involves: 1) the determination of relationships between site conditions ("critical variables") and option performance parameters (e.g., contaminant degradation or removal rates) and 2) the identification of upper-and lower-limit values ("operational limits") for these variables that define the ranges of site conditions over which option performance is likely to be sufficient (the "operating window") and insufficient (the "operating wall") for manag