Playing with Numbers: A Methodological Critique of the Social Enterprise Growth Myth

By Simon Teasdale, Fergus Lyon, R. Baldock. 2013

127 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Social enterprise is a contested concept which has become a site for policy intervention in many countries. In the UK the government has invested significant resources into social enterprise infrastructure, partly to increase the capacity of social enterprises to deliver or replace public services. Government publications show the number of social enterprises to have increased from 5,300 to 62,000 over a five-year period. This paper explores the myth of social enterprise growth in the UK through a methodological critique of the four government data sources used to construct and legitimise this myth. Particular attention is paid to how political decisions influence the construction of evidence. We find that growth is mainly attributable to political decisions to reinterpret key elements of the social enterprise definition and to include new organisational types in sampling frames.

Subfields: Finance, Management of Technology and Innovation, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2ce104d13bdd4942b33fa81c46f54081312872ec

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Finance

1. Leandro Sepúlveda
2. Bob Doherty
3. Fergus Lyon
4. H. Haugh
5. Vinciane Servantie
6. M. Hlady‐Rispal

In Management of Technology and Innovation

1. Leandro Sepúlveda
2. Bob Doherty
3. Fergus Lyon
4. H. Haugh
5. Vinciane Servantie
6. M. Hlady‐Rispal

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Leandro Sepúlveda
2. H. Haugh
3. Bob Doherty
4. Thomas Molony

Citations in the corpus

• Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda (2014, background): “There is also some evidence of ‘relabeling’ by organizations to self-define as SEs as the category becomes more widespread in policy and practice (Teasdale et al. 2013).”
• Social Enterprise – A New Phenomenon in the Field of Economic and Social Welfare? (2015, background): “One key element that helped to give substance to the social enterprise idea during this period was the growth of an official evidence base documenting the ‘apparent’ exponential growth that the sector experienced from 2003 onwards (Teasdale et al. 2013).”