Research Meeting, Friday, April 20, 2012, 14:00 – 16:00, GMCVO
Attendees:
Alison Peacock
Bernard Leach
Duncan Scott
Hawwa Haide
Heather Williams
John Diamond
Karen Dyson
Micaela Mazzei
Susanne Martikke
Discussion Points:
Research Network general business:
- Susanne announced the creation of a Twitter account, enabling network members to follow each other in between sessions. The address is @SusanneMartikke and a hashtag for the network has been created as #GMTSRN. From our discussion it appeared that most group members would not mind an introduction to creating a Twitter account, so hopefully this is something that can be included in the next meeting.
- VSSN/NCVO research conference: following previous discussions, Susanne has obtained agreement from GMCVO director Alex Whinnom to send a letter to NCVO asking for VCS bursaries to attend this conference. Susanne to draft a letter accordingly.
- An email to all on the list to inquire whether they still want to be included still needs to be sent, when Susanne’s workload permits.
- A list of expertise available from group members to facilitate forming buddying/mentoring/shadowing relationships among group members still needs to be compiled, but this is somewhat dependent on the bullet point above.
- The following future topics were identified: session on well-being including well-being research for/by Chorlton Good Neighbours, findings of a literature review on performance in VCS.
Micaela Mazzei, a Manchester-based PhD student at the University of Durham presented her findings from a study of social enterprises in Greater Manchester and Tyne and Wear.
- The research explored the relationship between business goals and ethical aspirations in social enterprises.
- Social enterprise is still a buzzword in policy and huge expectations are attached to this concept that seems to hold the promise of being able to marry social ethics to financial sustainability.
- Whereas in the U.S. social enterprise is defined as an activity, in Europe it is seen as an organisational form rooted in the cooperative tradition, thus presenting a collective dimension and participation. The UK seems somewhere in between these two poles: “social enterprise” is used as an umbrella term that comprises various organisational forms, but there is also the assumption that social enterprise should be an organisational form in its own right, akin to a ‘business’.
- Greater Manchester’s presence of a strong network of organisations and dynamism of the population provided fertile ground for a social economy to develop. There were already activists and organisations who were involved in alternative ways of doing business, and the VCS had developed lines of communication. There was a more laissez-faire approach to nurturing social enterprise and the VCS.
- In the North East, the statutory intervention has guided the development of a specific type of social enterprises. Targeting the local social needs the focus has been on developing local employment opportunities and training provision to access potential opportunities, here the economic focus is stronger, reflecting interventions and invtestment in a particular type of social enterprise, one that developed more in line with local priorities and possibilities than the bottom-up response to social need the research foundas in Greater Manchester.,.
- What emerges is the strong link that organisational development has a strong link has with the local context and that the abaility of SEs to reconcile their business and ethical aspirations is the product of constant negotiations, experiments and circumstantial decisions. The findings warn against the push to homogenise SE as by doing so is denying the recognition of their variety and obsfuscating the commitment to communities and people, thus privileging a set of expectations (financial) and/or achievements.
Date of next meeting:
Friday, 15 June, 2012,14:00 –16:00 at GMCVO.Bernard Leach will look at well-being and the well-being agenda, including his own research for Chorlton Good Neighbours on the topic.