Many individuals with psychiatric disabilities employed by work integration social enterprises (WISEs) rely on disability financial supports to supplement their income. However, little research has investigated the interconnections between WISE, disability support, and psychiatric disability. We draw on data from a qualitative study of employees, supervisors and administrators from seven WISEs in Ontario, Canada, to determine: (a) how does receipt of disability support impact the work experiences and choices of WISE workers? and (b) how does workers' receipt of disability support impact the business practices of WISEs? We find that the cap on employment income earned without triggering a reduction in benefits limits worker engagement and places WISEs in the difficult position of jeopardizing continuity of benefits while pursuing their mandate of encouraging participation in work. These findings illustrate how the structure and function of WISE are interconnected with the structure and function of disability support in ways that bring to light the tensions between their respective understandings of psychiatric disability.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical role of the third sector and mutual aid in supporting vulnerable populations through crisis response.This study asks how community resilience (mobilising resources to cope with crises) is enabled by third sector and mutual aid responses in the United Kingdom. We conducted a realist review of UK peer-reviewed and grey literature using stakeholderagreed search terms. Of 366 records identified, 55 contained sufficient explanatorydetailto develop and test programme theories. Iterative analysis refined initial propositions into three overarching theories, represented through three Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations. Findings emphasise the importance of community solidarity through shared adversity, adaptive capacity drawing on specialist knowledge, cross-sector collaboration and trust-based networks that enable rapid scaling. Collaborative roles were often temporary; without formal recognition and longer-term governance infrastructure, crisis response may remain fragile and fragmented. These theoretical models provide transferable explanations to inform crisis preparedness, adaptation planning, and resourcing of community-based responses.

Cooperatives as a democratic form of economic organization are an emerging focus in research on the social dimensions of circular economy. However, there is no international database on cooperatives and circular economy, impeding systematic analysis. Drawing on the first international database and survey of cooperatives and circular economy from 12 countries in Europe and the Americas, we explore how cooperatives embed circularity in their business models and governance, including the technology and partnership choices this involves, and how this uptake is currently facilitated. The analysis shows there to be a trend of new, usually small cooperatives that pursue circularity as a core value from inception, that tend to prefer upstream circularity strategies and that look for support from established cooperative networks. Already established, also larger cooperatives tend to explore circularity strategies both internally and by forming networks. There is potential for sectoral and intersectoral federations to facilitate circularity uptake.

With the positive effects of ‘good work’, and the adverse effects of poor work becoming increasingly well documented, innovative approaches to providing employment for those who are excluded from work continues to be a salient topic. Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) are organizations that pursue employment creation for those often excluded from the wider labour market. Yet WISEs have faced criticism for prioritizing market-based approaches to addressing social problems, posing implications for good work. Since ‘good work’ is highly subjective we employ Q methodology to answer the question: What are the perspectives of workers in WISEs regarding what ‘good work’ means to them? The findings of our study indicate that three broad perspectives on good work emerge from workers within WISEs. The nuances of these perspectives could help to guide WISEs to balance the provision of good work alongside social and commercial tensions.

This paper presents an economic evaluation of community-led and -owned organisations that deliver activities to support health and wellbeing. Because community-led organisations (CLOs) are a vital part of the social and solidarity economy, they increasingly feature in public health policies targeting disadvantaged populations. However, little is known about the value CLOs generate as few economic evaluations of them exist and those available focus on isolated activities (such as exercise classes) and/or specific populations (e.g., men-only collectives). The novelty of our work lies in the inclusion of multiple CLOs, comprehensive coverage of their activities, breadth of participants studied, and control group methodology applied in creating new knowledge of the health and wellbeing outcomes of CLOs and resources consumed to achieve them. We conducted cost-effectiveness and cost-consequence analyses of data collected via a 12-month longitudinal study. We compared 331 CLO participants in 14 UK-based CLOs to a 'do nothing' synthetic control group (n = 100). Health and wellbeing were measured using the ICECAP-A capability measure for adults, EuroQol EQ-5D-5L, Short-form Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale and the Revised Social Connectedness Scale. Resource use data included health, social care, and other community sector resources. Data collection occurred at four-points over the study period supported by publicly available accounts and data provided by each CLO. We found an incremental cost per year in full capability of £35,813 and an incremental cost per quality adjusted life year of £29,827. Statistically significant improvement in both social connectedness, and mental wellbeing were observed over the 12 month follow up. This work supports CLOs as an intervention to improve health and wellbeing in disadvantaged communities and identifies challenges for traditional evaluation methodology with regards to costing and comparator groups.

PurposeThis paper aims to compare the effects of social procurement policies on companies in the Victorian and Scottish construction industries. Scotland and Victoria have led the way in the recent revival of social procurement.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews were undertaken with 27 organisations and 28 participants who have experience of implementing social procurement policies into the construction industries of both jurisdictions.FindingsFindings contribute important new comparative insights from multiple stakeholder perspectives, into the effects of social procurement policies on firms operating in the construction industries of the two jurisdictions. Findings indicate an increasing awareness of social procurement in the construction industries of both Scotland and Victoria. However, differences in policy design determine the nature and extent of this awareness, the level of empowerment felt by actors and the social impact these new policies have in practice. It is concluded that to maximise the social impact of social procurement policies into major industries like construction, policymakers need to carefully consider supply-side limitations, the political context into which social procurement is being implemented and the way they prescribe what types of social value they want to create and for whom.Social implicationsSuccessful social procurement policy implementation into the construction industry can have significant positive social implications for the communities in which the industry builds due to the large numbers of people it employs and its large multiplier effect into the wider economy.Originality/valueBy investigating the effects of social procurement policies on a cross-section of organisations from across the construction industry supply chain, this international study, contributes new comparative insights to the emerging bodies of research on the impact of public procurement on companies in major industries like construction.

BACKGROUND:Research has been criticised for its extractive nature, often neglecting to reciprocate benefits to the communities involved. Addressing this, Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) has emerged as a crucial approach, engaging community members as research partners rather than subjects of research. However, it is important that PPIE is carried out in a meaningful way to avoid tokenism and extraction from communities. This paper reflects on the learning from the PPIE approach of the CommonHealth Assets (CHA) project, which partnered with 14 community-led organisations (CLOs) across the UK to evaluate their impact on health and wellbeing in their communities. MAIN BODY:The CHA Lived Experience Panel (LEP), comprised of around 13 individuals from the project-partnered CLOs, played a pivotal role in informing and influencing the research process to enhance the relevance and impact of the CHA project. Following community engagement resources, we aimed to create a supportive and inclusive environment for meaningful PPIE. Through the evaluation of the CHA LEP, this paper reports on its successes and limitations to offer recommendations on creating the conditions for meaningful and effective PPIE in community-based public health research. From our evaluation, we found that adequately resourcing PPIE is crucial to its success. PPIE activities require a dedicated facilitator with expertise in working with diverse stakeholders to advocate for the sustained integration of PPIE into the research team, and to support contributors in their engagement. Being adaptive and responsive in your approach, utilising continuous evaluation and accountability in the process is also key. For contributors to have a meaningful impact, they must be engaged from the funding application stage and throughout the early stages of the project. Contributors must work closely with members of the research team at all levels, with researchers committing to facilitating authentic involvement of contributors, accessing training to work with diverse communication needs where required. CONCLUSION:Our findings demonstrate that meaningful and effective PPIE requires a strong, sustained commitment to valuing and integrating patient/public perspectives in research. We add to the knowledge base in this area by offering a practical example of implementing PPIE in community-based research settings.

An ageing population has placed strains on health and social care systems. Innovative solutions have been sought to inject capacity and capability in order to deliver services to older people more efficiently and effectively. Over the last two decades, governments have actively encouraged third sector organisations to deliver public services on the assumption that they exhibit higher levels of innovation, efficiency and responsiveness. The evidence base, particularly for whether they provide better value for money, remains poor. We present the results of a systematic literature review on the costs and outcomes of services for older people delivered by third sector organisations. We combine this evidence with a framework for analysing the benefits and costs of third sector-led initiatives, and test this out empirically with a group of initiatives delivered for older people in an urban context. We find that our method may hold considerable promise for the evaluation of third sector initiatives.

Nonprofits are increasingly involved in collaborative governance mechanisms, on the premise that their proximity to end users and better understanding of the local contexts can lead to better policy outcomes. Although government–nonprofit relations have been theorized and explored by several studies, few studies have examined specifically collaborative governance, instead focusing on other phases of policy development or service delivery. In this article, we present a realist evaluation of data gathered from in-depth semi-structured interviews ( N = 41) and four focus groups with stakeholders involved in collaborative governance arrangements within “Strategic Public Social Partnerships” in Scotland. Our findings indicate that collaborative governance processes involving nonprofits can potentially lead to improved services through mechanisms such as the development of trust and the establishment of new learning dynamics, and when knowledgeable leadership and mutuality drive collaborations. However, this is only true if the long-term sustainability of these processes translates into the mainstreaming of both the resulting services and their underlying collaborative principles.

People with serious and persistent mental illnesses and/or substance use disorders are among the most economically and socially disenfranchised populations in Canada, and often present with long histories of labour market detachment and underemployment. Work engagement has the potential to improve social determinants of health while also harnessing productive capacity. This article reports on a five-year study examining the social, economic, and health impacts of Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) in the mental health sector in Ontario, Canada. The findings shed light on the population that works in WISEs, its levels of social and labour market integration, and organizational features that influence worker outcomes. Results highlight both the importance of WISEs as a means of supporting employment, and challenges to organizational sustainability.

This research explores ways public service ecosystems developed during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on relationships between community-led mutual aid groups and the state. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and mobile ethnographic methods with 30 participants from the public sector and three mutual aid groups across Scotland. We show how relationships between mutual aid groups and the state - whether complementary, supplementary, or adversarial - shifted over the course of the pandemic. Our findings add nuance to understandings that presuppose mutual aid as antagonistic, highlighting ways that mutual aid groups may be brought into existing public service ecosystems.

Public procurement policy reforms, and specifically social procurement practices designed to support the social economy and create social value, are growing in popularity. However, there is still limited knowledge around the extent to which rhetorical aims of procurement reforms are perceived to be realized through the implementation of social procurement policies. This research provides important insights for social procurement advocates and, in particular, for policy-makers and public managers working at all levels of government. The authors highlight how reforms in Scotland have seemingly benefited the social economy by tangibly directing significant spend toward social economy organizations and changing societal and individual beliefs about their social and economic value. At the same time, there are still barriers to value creation at organizational and individual levels. These findings are important for those attempting to strengthen their social procurement policies and encourage collaboration in a way that advantages actors working across the public service ecosystem. From qualitative research undertaken in Scotland, the authors analyse procurement policy reforms. Utilizing a public service ecosystem framework, barriers to value creation were found, including overly bureaucratic practices, centrally devised rules, and conflicting organizational aims. The authors develop insights into ways policy design and implementation creates (or does not create) value across the many levels of an ecosystem where procurement policy reforms have impact, demonstrating the benefits of using a service ecosystem framework for understanding nuanced impacts and perceptions of policy implementation.

In this paper we explore whether government policy acts as a barrier or facilitator to the work of nonprofits, and in what ways (if at all) different policy contexts influence the work of place-based community-led nonprofit organizations working to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities. Employing 'abductive' analysis of qualitative data collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 20 non-profit leaders located in different parts of the UK, we found that government policy can act both as barrier and facilitator at various times. There is often a disconnection between policy intent and the realities of local context, funding arrangements for nonprofits was often dependent on developing and maintaining successful relationships, and there were clear tensions between the pursuit of mission and alignment to government priorities.

In response to increasingly complex needs and tightening fiscal constraints, integration has led to changes in governance arrangements and joint service delivery. Applying a service ecosystem a holistic view is presented to discuss the interconnectedness between the domains of the health and social care ecosystem, including their unique and shared contexts and the various actors and institutions involved. However, our analysis also exposes important power dimensions regarding how the service ecosystem is framed and the actors acknowledged as involved in value co-creation. In response, three interdependent types of integration (structural, institutional, and relational) are proposed.

This paper is derived from a study of the mission statements of a sample of 100 United Kingdom social enterprises. The purpose of the research was to reveal what insight such organisational artefacts provide in relation to the reconciliation of inherently dual social and financial objectives. It relies on multiple phases of qualitative analysis and draws out findings across two key themes: vocabulary clusters and the contextualisation of meaning; and, the presence of rhetoric in terms of communication and strategy.

Research Summary: Critical scholars recognize a disjuncture between the problems identified by social entrepreneurs and the solutions they propose. Existing theory treats this as a problem to be rectified at the organizational level. In this essay, we widen attention to the macro-oriented systems change strategies of social entrepreneurs. We develop a dynamic typology showing how strategies are reassembled over time to stimulate or deflect desire for systems change. Deriving inspiration from Goffman, we theorize the ways that different types of systems change actor perform systems change via interaction with their environments. Drawing on illustrative cases on the boundaries of social entrepreneurship, we show how the collective action frameworks developed by systems change actors can be adapted and repurposed by their (systems) audiences: effectively turning rebellion into money. Managerial Summary: Social entrepreneurs often call for systems change to tackle wicked problems such as poverty or climate change. However, the strategies they propose for tackling these problems, such as lending money to poor people are considerably less radical. In this essay, we identify three types of systems change actor distinguished by the degree of systems change they call for. We trace their ideas over time to illustrate how strategies are mediated, and subsequently repurposed through interaction with the systems they seek to change. In conclusion, we call upon researchers and social entrepreneurs to widen their perspectives to incorporate more radical ideas and potentials for systems change, and for greater attention to be devoted to scrutinizing and protecting the integrity of systems change strategies.

Introduction This research investigates how community-led organisations' (CLOs') use of assets-based approaches improves health and well-being, and how that might be different in different contexts. Assets-based approaches involve 'doing with' rather than 'doing to' and bring people in communities together to achieve positive change using their own knowledge, skills and experience. Some studies have shown that such approaches can have a positive effect on health and well-being. However, research is limited, and we know little about which approaches lead to which outcomes and how different contexts might affect success. Methods and analysis Using a realist approach, we will work with 15 CLOs based in disadvantaged communities in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A realist synthesis of review papers, and a policy analysis in different contexts, precedes qualitative interviews and workshops with stakeholders, to find out how CLOs' programmes work and identify existing data. We will explore participants' experiences through: a Q methodology study; participatory photography workshops; qualitative interviews and measure outcomes using a longitudinal survey, with 225 CLO participants, to assess impact for people who connect with the CLOs. An economic analysis will estimate costs and benefits to participants, for different contexts and mechanisms. A 'Lived Experience Panel' of people connected with our CLOs as participants or volunteers, will ensure the appropriateness of the research, interpretation and reporting of findings. Ethics and dissemination This project, research tools and consent processes have been approved by the Glasgow Caledonian University School of Health and Life Sciences Ethics Committee, and affirmed by Ethics Committees at Bournemouth University, Queen's University Belfast and the University of East London. Common Health Assets does not involve any National Health Service sites, staff or patients. Findings will be presented through social media, project website, blogs, policy briefings, journal articles, conferences and visually in short digital stories, and photographic exhibitions.

We investigate what distinguishes social entrepreneurial ecosystems (SEEs) from entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) through appreciation of the importance of context-the multiplex of intertwined social, spatial, temporal, historical, cultural, and political influences. Community is incorporated as a key variable and hitherto overlooked dimension of the structure and influence of SEEs. We draw on extant literature and examples of a variety of SEEs to support our propositions and demonstrate why considerations of both context and community are critical to advance understanding of SEEs. We contribute to the study of SEEs by presenting a new conceptual framework and theorizing SEE as an evolving composite of interdependent actors who interact and collaborate across multiple levels to collectively generate positive externalities and drive sustainable solutions to social problems.

This article aims to investigate the scientific literature on the management of tensions and trade-offs in hybrid organizations. These can arise from the hybrid nature of these organizations and involve diverse aspects relevant for their management. From our corpus of 16 papers, we assessed as being of 'high quality', we categorized different types of tensions and the solutions put forward to manage or mitigate those tensions. The systematic literature review is subdivided into five categories: (1) framing the question(s); (2) identifying relevant works; (3) collecting data; (4) analyzing evidence; (5) interpreting the findings. An iterative process of discussion about codes helped us to compose the final categories for analysis. Our results explain how hybrid organizations go through a constant process of balancing various logics, and how this balancing works to address issues that are both endogenous and exogenous to the organization. We identify two strategies that organizations employ to manage hybridity-decoupling logics and logic shifting-and each strategy has different effects at different levels of the institutional context. Because we focus only on the literature assessed as being of 'high quality' this inevitably leads to many excluded articles.