L’écosystème d’entreprises sociales en Angleterre : une économie sociale de plus en plus « macro-privée » déformée par la politique

Conceptualising a chameleon: social enterprise as a public provider

“…Social enterprise emerges through identification of unmet social needs, market and/or governmental failure and opportunities for social change (Defourny and Nyssens, 2010b; Nicholls, 2006). As such, the formation and operations of social enterprise are contingent upon the nature of the social problems and the contexts in which they emerge (Choi et al , 2020; Eversole et al , 2014; Hazenberg and Bajwa-Patel, 2021). Thus, social enterprise is distinctive to, and embedded in, its geography, political economy, and socio-cultural contexts (Defourny and Nyssens, 2010a, 2010b; Pullman et al , 2018).…”

“…Policy regimes such as the likes of New Labour’s “Third Way” and the Conservative-led “Big Society” has seen privatising and hybridising developments in welfare provision (Hazenberg and Hall, 2013; Nicholls and Teasdale, 2021; Roy et al , 2013). These marketising developments have resulted in state withdrawal from direct provision and the fostering of greater diversity in service delivery from private and third sector organisations, including social enterprise, as alternative providers of public services (Hazenberg and Bajwa-Patel, 2021; Hazenberg and Hall, 2013). Notably, processes of “spinning out” over the past few decades have intended to empower public sector workers giving them greater control over the services they provide in the forms of public sector mutuals, co-operatives, and spinouts (Hazenberg and Hall, 2013, 2016).…”