Governance of social enterprises in South Yorkshire, UK: Towards a new orientation

Social enterprise as a concept is at the core of the United Kingdom’s government strategies of ameliorating socio economic deprivation and has experienced phenomenal growth across the country over the years. Globalisation and increased demands for effective social welfare interventions is increasingly forcing social enterprises to evaluate their governance structures in addition to business models to ensure success and longevity of their operations. Consequently, there has been an upsurge of interest in the governance of social enterprises over the past 15 years as it has become apparent that financial sustainability of social enterprise also depends on effective decision making at strategic level and their ability to engage with a variety of stakeholders outside the social economy. Despite this increased in interest there are still significant gaps in the understanding and knowledge of how nature and type of governance model influence the operational efficiency of social enterprises. This is particularly in view of apparent shift from democratic to stewardship types of governance models of governance by some social enterprise. The focus of this paper is on generating additional knowledge on the reasons of this paradigm shift in social enterprise governance, given lack of in-depth academic scrutiny on this phenomenon. The paper presents and critically analyses key results emerging from a doctoral investigation on the governance of social enterprise in South Yorkshire.