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.