Aiding Social Enterprises: A Second Order Cybernetics Perspective

Northumbria University, City Campus East - Room 403

Tuesday October 29

Dr Rachel Dunston & Dr Adrain Small, Northumbria University

Aiding Social Enterprises: A Second Order Cybernetics Perspective

Social Enterprises have special needs in terms of business support. Their social impact orientation can conflict with their need to be financially viable and ‘make money’. Support agencies do not appear to appreciate this situation with social enterprises feeling left in a quandary. This can lead to an identity crisis. The challenge is to establish how this can be resolved. This can be viewed as a complex problem as it involves different stakeholders with a vested interest in the success of social enterprises and that there is ambiguity and uncertainty about how to handle. Consequently, a Problem Structuring Method (VIPLAN Methodology (VM)) is used in a pilot workshop setting to guide a small group of individuals, each representing a Social Enterprise in the NE of England, to explore the issues they face and establish a course of action to address a prioritised defined problem. The workshop was followed up three months later with individual interviews to examine the impact of the workshop upon their Social Enterprise activities. The findings from this pilot study demonstrated that the use of the VM was successful in generating useful change.

About the Speakers:

Adrian is an Associate Professor of Operations Management and the research group lead for the Decision-Making research group within Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. His main research activities are focused around the areas of process improvement, continuous improvement, Lean and Lean thinking in both manufacturing and service contexts. Adrian also undertakes research in Problem Structuring Methods (PSM), Digitalization, Industry 4.0, Resilience and Geopolitics

Rebecca is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Strategy within Newcastle Business School. She is the module tutor for the Undergraduate Business Consultancy Project within the Business Clinic. Rebecca's main research focus and interests are social entrepreneurs, understanding their wider ecosystems and how business support can be better tailored to their needs. From a teaching and learning perspective, experiential learning is a particular focus, how it can be embedded successfully and the expectations which students and academics have of it.