Food Business and Development - Journal Articles
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Rurality as context for innovative responses to social challenges – The role of rural social enterprises(Elsevier Ltd, 2023) Olmedo, Lucas; van Twuijver, Mara; O'Shaughnessy, Mary; Horizon 2020; Social Finance FoundationRural social enterprises are increasingly recognized as organisations that contribute to local development by providing goods and/or services to meet community needs and by fostering inclusive social and governance relations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how rural social enterprises engage in a plurality of socio-economic relations with different dimensions of their ‘place’ when contributing to the development of their localities. Based on three in-depth case studies of social enterprises operating in rural Ireland, our findings illustrate how rural social enterprises engage with locational, institutional, material and identity aspects of their ‘place’, which indicates their ‘placial embeddedness’. Moreover, our findings also demonstrate how these organisations engage in, and combine market, redistribution and reciprocity relations, which indicates their ‘substantive hybridity’. Based on the interrelated nature of these findings, we argue that it is through a process of placial substantive hybridity that rural social enterprises foster social innovation in order to contribute to an integrated development of their localities. They harness and (re)valorise (untapped) local resources while complementing these with other resources from extra-local sources and accommodate and/or respond to structural-exogenous forces based on the needs of their local population in line with neo-endogenous rural development. © 2021 The AuthorsItem Social enterprise in Ireland - Why work integration social enterprises (WISEs) dominate the discourse(De Gruyter Open Ltd, 2016) O'Shaughnessy, Mary; O'Hara, PatriciaWhat is termed the social economy in Ireland includes charities, co-operatives, voluntary associations and non-profits. However, the label is not widely used to describe them collectively so that many organisations within the wider social economy do not identify themselves with, or even fully understand, the term. The concept of social enterprise first emerged in public policy discourse in the 1990s and, since then, has been mainly viewed as a mechanism of job creation/integration and service provision in disadvantaged communities. This perspective on social enterprise has been significantly influenced by European policy. By contrast, in Irish academic discourse, the interpretation of social enterprise is more varied due to the different influences of the US and European intellectual traditions. These variations have contributed to ambiguity about the social economy as a sector, and social enterprises as distinctive forms, and this has compromised attempts to estimate the scale and potential of the sector in Ireland to date. In 2013, as part of the policy response to the unemployment crisis of the economic recession, the Irish government commissioned an examination of the job-creation potential of social enterprise. The Forfás report offered a new official definition of social enterprise, characterised by many of the features of the EMES ideal type. Furthermore, the description and examples of social enterprises included in the report confirmed the dominance of one model of social enterprise in Ireland-the Work Integration Social Enterprise or WISE. The objective of this paper is to discuss how social economy and social enterprise are understood in Ireland and to explain how WISEs have evolved as the dominant Irish social enterprise model to date. The influence of the US (Salamon and Anheier 1997; Dees 1998) and European/EMES academic traditions (Pestoff 1998; Borzaga and Defourny 2001; Nyssens 2006; Defourny and Nyssens 2010, 2012) and EU and national policy perspectives, since the early 1990s, on Irish academic and policy discourse is discussed in this paper. It is argued that the adoption by successive Irish governments of a labour market integration approach, to supporting the development of the Irish social economy, since the early 1990s, has shaped the sector and contributed to the emergence of one dominant social enterprise type, the WISE. Some of the characteristics and impacts of Irish WISE are then discussed together with the challenges they face. © 2016 O'Shaughnessy and O'Hara, published by De Gruyter.Item A geographical analysis of social enterprises: the case of Ireland(Emerald Publishing, 2024) Olmedo, Lucas; O’Shaughnessy, Mary; Holloway, Paul; Department of Rural and Community DevelopmentPurpose: This study aims to conduct a geographical analysis of the distribution and type of activities developed by social enterprises in rural and urban areas of Ireland. Design/methodology/approach: The study analyses data of more than 4,000 social enterprises against a six-tier rural/urban typology, using descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests to test six hypotheses. Findings: The study shows a geographical rural–urban pattern in the distribution of social enterprises in Ireland, with a positive association between the remoteness of an area and the ratio of social enterprises, and a lack of capital-city effect related to the density of social enterprises. The analysis also shows a statistically significant geographical rural–urban pattern for the types of activities developed by social enterprises. The authors observe a positive association between the remoteness of the areas and the presence of social enterprises operating in the community and local development sector whereas the association is not significant for social enterprises developing welfare services. Research limitations/implications: The paper shows the potential of using recently developed rural–urban typologies and tools such as geographical information systems for conducting geographical research on social enterprises. The findings also have implications for informing spatially sensitive policymaking on social enterprises. Originality/value: The merging of a large national data set of social enterprises with geographical tools and data at subregional level contributes to the methodological advancement of the field of social enterprises, providing tools and frameworks for a nuanced and spatially sensitive analysis of these organisations. © 2024, Lucas Olmedo, Mary O. Shaughnessy and Paul Holloway.Item Support networks for social innovation: Insights from Ireland(Routledge, 2023) Chatzichristos, Georgios; Olmedo, Luca; van Twuijver, Mara; O'Shaughnessy, MaryThis article explores the support structures for social innovation from a network perspective, applying a qualitative enriched Social Network Analysis (SNA) to investigate them. The analysis draws on a survey distributed among three hundred and twenty-one (321) social innovation organisation in Ireland, of which sixty-two (62) valid responses were included in the analysis. This is complemented with sixteen (16) semi-structured interviews with key informants. The current findings identified the strong bridging capacity of the Irish public sector in supporting social innovation, specifically in the start-up phase of social innovative initiatives. At the same time, the findings signal a mismatch between the hybrid nature of social innovation and the unilateral approach of public institutions. It points to the need for blended and cross-sectoral supports in order to scale-up and enable more diverse pathways for systemic change. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Item Support structures for a plural economy in rural areas? Analysing the role of community-based social enterprises(John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2024) Olmedo, Lucas; Rinne-Koski, Katja Marika; O'Shaughnessy, Mary; Matilainen, Anne; Lähdesmäki, Merja; Government of Ireland; Academy of FinlandCommunity-led innovative solutions, including community-based social enterprises, have been brought to the fore as significant actors with the potential to contribute to neo-endogenous rural development. Through 34 interviews with stakeholders of four community-based social enterprises operating in rural Ireland and Finland, we analyse the role of these organisations in the institutionalisation of plural (socio-)economic relations within different rural areas of Europe. Our findings demonstrate how community-based social enterprises can act as enablers and supporters of local markets, channels of redistributive resources and coordinators of local reciprocity, thus, contributing to ‘institutional thickness’ within their localities. We also show how structural differences, such as the role of local government in Finland and Ireland, can partially explain the role of these organisations as rural development actors. Finally, our article stresses the relevance of developing research and policies from a socially embedded and pluralistic view of the economy to provide nuanced analysis and realistic solutions to the complex challenges that rural areas face. © 2023 The Authors. Sociologia Ruralis published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Rural Sociology.