Empowering communities? Exploring roles in facilitated social enterprise

Abstract

Purpose States and development bodies are increasingly stimulating social enterprise activity in communities as an empowering social and economic development intervention. This type of development initiative is often facilitated by actors who are external to communities, and the role of community members is not clear. This paper aims to explore whether facilitated social enterprise benefits or disempowers communities. Design/methodology/approach The focus is a case study of a project based in Scotland designed to stimulate the creation of social enterprises involved in community growing. The case study approach involved a mix of methods, including formal (semi-structured) interviews, participant observation and analysis of documentary evidence. Analysis of findings was undertaken using Muñoz and Steinerowski’s (2012) theory of social entrepreneurial behaviour. Findings Findings suggest that social enterprise that originates outside communities and is facilitated by external actors is potentially disempowering, particularly when social enterprise development does not necessarily align with community needs. The paper reiterates findings in previous studies that certain roles in facilitated social enterprise require to be community-led. Projects that do attempt to facilitate social enterprise would benefit from community participation at the project planning stage. Originality/value If facilitated social enterprise is increasingly promoted as an empowering development intervention, this paper provides insight about how facilitated social enterprise occurs in practice and gives preliminary information about possible barriers to empowerment using this approach to development.

Community forest enterprises and social enterprises: the confluence of two streams of literatures for sustainable natural resource management

“…For CFEs, this translates into members of the local community being given a voice and playing a direct role in the organization. This can be achieved, for example, with board representation or through consultation using targeted surveys and feedback sessions with the community-at-large (Finlayson and Roy, 2019).…”

“…The paper also enriches the social enterprise literature by extending the notion of decentralized decision-making and community empowerment. While both of these concepts are recognized as important topics in the social enterprise literature (Haugh and Talwar, 2016;Finlayson and Roy, 2019), they have yet to be considered in light of collective efforts to plan for and practice stewardship of local, common resource systems, such as forests. Delineating CFEs' varied activities, as well as prospects and challenges, also adds nuance to studies in environmental social enterprise (Vickers and Lyon, 2014) which emphasize the need to amplify the study of social enterprise beyond social sector contexts, toward understanding their role in advancing sustainability in natural systems.…”

From social activism to active socialization: The evolution of football ideology in community‐owned football clubs

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Measuring of Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) for Poverty Alleviation in Batu City, East Java Province - Indonesia

“…Community empowerment is involvement in various planned community activities to arouse participation and increase contributions to the benefit of the community. The orientation is directed towards the individualist and not the collectivist [11], [12]. The empowerment of human resources in the implementation of SDGs is based on individual employees and community groups of development actors and other caring groups.…”

“…So community empowerment must be interpreted as a process to make individual communities more empowered and capable, as well as responsible for solving the community's problems. This is done by giving full trust and authority to foster a sense of responsibility in solving their problems [11], [20].…”