Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

Throughout the 20th century multiple discourses of the nature of enterprise and the entrepreneur have developed. In this article, we trace these discourses and perspectives as a backdrop to understanding social and economic entrepreneurship. The article considers the nature of social enterprise and whether,indeed how, it might be construed as a form of entrepreneurship. It is argued that in the past social enterprises have been modelled on tenets of ‘not-for-profit’ charitable organizations that have attracted human and social capital with pro-social, community-spirited motives, and have engendered survival strategies premised on grant dependency. In the longer term, we argue, social enterprises should be…