Challenges of Social Enterprises

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Challenges of Social Enterprises
Introduction
Social enterprise has drawn different stances from a wide range of scholars. Some scholars hold that Social enterprises are social organizations formed purposely to raise income (Borzaga & Defourny 2004). In these social organizations, entrepreneurial skills are notably employed. From this viewpoint, social enterprises are distinct from other social organizations because they seldom depend on government, public and other donors for funding (Cabinet Office 2006). In these social organizations, grants and donations primarily facilitate their social objectives. In this sense, social enterprises tend to consolidate their efforts towards the realization of social objectives (Roper & Cheney 2005). The social enterprises can easily be distinguished from other social organizations based on their objectives. Social organizations have set their goals based on wealth maximization. The social enterprises have incorporated entrepreneurial skills along side their social objectives.
The social sector has dramatically been stunned by recent growth. This has attracted countless social organizations that also rely on donations and grants from similar sources (Roper & Cheney 2005). This move caused uproar as competition stiffened among different social organizations. For instance, in the United Kingdom, labour government supported social sectors comprehensively. This tendency attracted more social organizations to transform themselves into social enterprises (Borzaga & Defourny 2004). The outraged debates over the UK labour government’s intense entrepreneurial assistance to the social sector were seldom brought to a halt. The concept of social entrepreneurship is traced back to the United Kingdom. Victorians initiated the establishment of social entrepreneurship within health institutions. During this time, the health institutions provided health services to the people at cost shared fees. The facilities also provided other services and products at affordable fees. The amounts of income realized in these endeavours were channelled to charity (Cabinet Office 2006).
These activities formed the basis of different charitable organizations founded thereafter. According to some scholars, charities have currently been used to auger grants and donations that have formed the basis of social enterprises. It is claimed that before the formation of current social enterprises, current social enterprises operated as trading charities (Kingston & Bolton 2004). The support programs which these charitable organizations operated remained an illusion in social sectors. Social entrepreneurial skills were introduced in an effort to bring clarity. Therefore, social enterprises were born (Wise 2001). Definitively, they were tagged as organizations which try to achieve their primary social goals using business entrepreneurial methods. This paper intends to identify operational challenges facing social enterprises and the possible strategies that they can use to combat competitive forces in the social sector.
Social Entrepreneurship
In the 1990s, a new field in the social sector was introduced. This was social entrepreneurship. Different people were obsessed a...