Research Directions

Enterprise and Sustainability

Project Manager: Dr. Sarah-Anne Muñoz

Researchers: Aileen Marshall, Lindsay Grant

This project involves the development of an MSc module around the topic of ethical business. Lecture materials, course notes, reading lists and student assessments will be developed. The course will be designed in order to engage students in a critical examination of the linkages between business and sustainable development. The course will offer students an understanding of business forms such as the social enterprise and cooperative and their relationship to sustainable development. It will also consider issues surrounding community-owned and community-initiated businesses, their goals and governance structures. The role of the social enterprise model in remote and rural areas will be addressed in particular.

Following on from their involvement in the BEST Procurement Programme, SDRC intend to continue and extend their research into topics relating to social enterprise. The following is a brief summary of some of our research directions:

Social Enterprise and Sustainable Consumption

SDRC are interested in the role that the social enterprise sector can play in both facilitating and encouraging sustainable consumption.

Social Enterprise and Sustainable, Rural Communities

The contribution that social enterprise can make to the rural economy is under-researched. SDRC are looking in particular to increase the knowledge about community-initiated and community-led social enterprises in rural and remote areas and examine their contribution to the economic, as well as the environmental, sustainability of rural areas.

SDRC hosted a workshop on this topic in October 2007 - Read Report

Social Enterprise and Deprivation

Social enterprises are often associated with processes of renewal or regeneration in urban areas. As many are community initiated, they signify the deprived community claiming ownership over its own regeneration. Thus, they bring wider benefits such as community cohesion and sustainability to deprived areas. Many, for example, bring employment and specifically set out to tackle social exclusion. SDRC are looking to map the impact that social enterprises have on the alleviation of poverty.

SDRC hosted a workshop on this topic on November 22nd 2007 - Read Report

Social Accounting and Added Value within the Social Enterprise Sector

SDRC are looking to investigate the extent to which social accounting methods are used by social enterprises and whether they are viewed by social enterprise practitioners as added-value measurement tools. The research will explore the perceived effectiveness and drawbacks from the perspective of social enterprises and the public sector. It is also interesting to establish the degree to which social enterprises have been able to market their added value, to the public sector and others, as an outcome of social accounting. Therefore, the research will explore whether social accounting helps social enterprises to win contracts and increase their traded income.

SDRC hosted a workshop on this topic on February 21st 2008 - Read Report