How social enterprise executives perceive their relationship with the government in South Korea: Insights from a Q‐methodological study

Abstract

This study utilizes Q‐methodology to assess the perspectives of 37 executives of government‐certified social enterprises in South Korea on their organization's relationship with the public sector in terms of the complementary‐supplementary‐adversarial conceptual frameworks of Toepler et al. and Young and the literature on co‐production. The perspectives of social enterprise executives that participate in co‐production arrangements represent an underexplored domain. Our findings contribute to the framework of Toepler et al. by empirically gauging the effects of, in particular, an enabling regulatory framework and public funding relative to the tensions represented by potentially excessive regulation. Although the focus on a single context limits the generalizability of the study, it provides insights on the nuances and complexities of public sector patronage while highlighting that such patronage is generally seen as being more complementary than adversarial. Our findings contribute to efforts to empirically gauge perceptions of co‐production arrangements.

Agency and collaboration: an analysis of the relationship between government-certified social enterprises and the public sector in South Korea

“…Authors' own work; however, although the survey items utilized in this study were crafted by the authors, we note that they appeared in an earlier study published by the authorsseeClaassen et al (2023b) …”