The “Best Paper Award” was launched in the 4th EMES International Research Conference in Liege (Belgium) in two distinct categories, “Best Conference Paper” and “Best PhD Presentation”. The goal of this Award is to recognize the work of scholars who help advance social enterprise as a research area with theoretical or methodological contributions. Given the committment of EMES with emerging scholars, the Award specifically distinguishes a PhD category but it also aims to emphasize the work of researchers who are in the initial phases of their careers.
For this edition, the winners were selected by an evaluation committee composed by the two conference co-chairs, Pekka Pättiniemi and Marthe Nyssens, Simon Teasdale from Glasgow Caledonian University, United Kingdom (recipient of the first Award) and Benjamin Huybrechts from HEC-University of Liege, Belgium.
For the second edition of this Award, the winner of the “Best Conference Paper” is María L. Granados from the University of Westminster (UK) for her paper “Knowing what Social Enterprises know”. “I am very happy to receive the 2015 EMES Conference Best Paper Award in the Scholar category. This is an encouraging recognition of my research and work in Social Enterprises from a group of scholars that I really admire. It gives me the motivation to continue pursuing my research in understanding more about this important and valuable enterprises”, said María when she received notification of the Award.
The winner of the “Best PhD Presentation” is Merie Joseph Kannampuzha from the Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics (Finland) for her paper “Social Innovation and Earned Income – Antecedents and Outcomes of the Institutional Logics in Hybrid Social Enterprises” (together with Kai Hockerts). When she heard about it, Merie Joseph shared with us that “this award is an honor to an early career researcher like me. I am happy to be recognized by EMES for the research which is part of my PhD and I thank the EMES Best Paper award evaluation committee for this award. It was the result of a joint effort with Prof. Kai Hockerts and we worked together to develop the database for the research, the survey and the article. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to work with him and get his guidance during the research. I also thank my husband Manuel for supporting my research career and taking care of our little Francisco while I was away in Copenhagen for my research work. I extend my gratitude for the financial support for my PhD research from Liikesivistysrahasto, University of Jyväskylä rectors mobility grant, Jyväskylä School of Business and Economics mobility grant , Yksityisyrittäjäin Säätiö and Marcus Wallenberg foundation. In addition, I thank the entrepreneurship platform of CBS CSR center which funded the data collection partially.”
You can see the abstract of the two awarded articles at the end of this news piece. To download the full version of the papers you can go the EMES Selected Conference Papers page in the EMES Network website (www.emes.net).
In the first edition of this Award, Simon Teasdale, Fergus Lyon and Rob Baldock were selected for their paper “Playing with Numbers: A methodological critique of the social enterprise growth myth”. The awarded authors kindly donated the financial prize of 350€ to support the EMES PhD network. The winner of the first “Best PhD Presentation” was Lore Wellens for her paper “Downward accountability of belgian nonprofit organizations: a quantitative study” (together with Marc Jegers) which you can download here.
Knowing what Social Enterprises know
María L. Granados, Westminster Business School, University of Westminster, UK
Abstract: Social Enterprises (SEs) are normally micro and small businesses that trade to tackle social problems, and to improve communities, people’s life chances, and the environment. Thus, their importance to society and economies is increasing. However, there is still a need for more understanding of how these organisations operate, perform, innovate and scale-up. Obtaining this understanding is the main driver of this paper, which explores the SE activities to manage their knowledge. Interviews from 21 owners and senior members of SEs in UK confirmed that SEs possessed valuable tacit and explicit knowledge about their organisation, practices, experiences and work with communities and costumers. This knowledge is managed informally and, when acquired, is not always converted into usable knowledge, applied to create value, and protected from inappropriate or illegal use. Thus, SEs need to know what they know and manage effectively that knowledge. This can help them to acquire, convert, apply and protect all their knowledge that would result in added value to their organisation and stakeholders, legitimised their practice, adjusted and defined their operational and strategic direction, and informed the measurement of their social impact. This paper contributes to SE and Knowledge Management researchers, SE practitioners and organisations supporting SEs.
Social Innovation and Earned Income – Antecedents and Outcomes of the Institutional Logics in Hybrid Social Enterprises
Merie Joseph Kannampuzha and Kai Hockerts, Copenhagen Business School
Abstract: This paper discusses two organizational logics which have been proposed as being symptomatic for hybrid social enterprises by Dees and Anderson (2006): a social innovation logic which aims to transform sectors by propagating more effective solutions, and an earned income logic which prioritizes income from sold products and service over grants and donations. Based on existing literature, we advance a model in which we identify four factors (a willingness to share knowledge, stakeholder driven decision making, a use of salaried employees, and dividend payments) that predict the emergence of these logics in social enterprises. Moreover, we propose that whereas social enterprises adopting a social innovation logic tend to go along with increased social impact ambitions, social enterprises with earned income logic tend to favor the likely fundability of social enterprises. These hypotheses are tested through a sample of 441 emerging social entrepreneurs who are in the process of starting a social venture and a second sample of 245 managers at mature social enterprises. Results from the nascent social enterprise sample confirm all hypotheses. Correlations are less strong for the mature social enterprise sample and for three hypotheses we could no longer deliver significant results.