A Holistic Topology of Opportunities and Challenges
Authors: Alex Nicholls with Cathy Pharoah
The past twenty years have seen a dramatic change in the definitional boundaries set around the finance sector. As financial services have grown in size and influence in developed economies, the traditional boundaries between ‘economic-’ and ‘social-' purpose activities have become increasingly blurred (see Offer 2001).
From a public policy perspective, private finance has been encouraged to play a much more active role in financing public goods and services, with new contractual models such as the Private Finance Initiative blending public and private finance at a project level (LeGrand and Bartlett, 1992; Bult Spiering, Dewulf, 2006).
Key opportunities for a new type of finance have included addressing economic exclusion and poverty (Yunus, 1998; HM Treasury, 1999; Reifner, 2000; Guene and Mayo, 2001) and supporting community regeneration (Leadbeater, 1997; Westall, 2002; HM Treasury, 2002; Gardiner, 2006).
More recently, governments have also been exploring how better to support outsourcing relationships that go beyond the private sector to include charities and other public benefit organisations (Salamon and Anheier, 1999; Giddens, 2000; DTI, 2003; HM Treasury, 2007).
In the UK, the establishment of a Social Enterprise Unit within government aimed to create an enabling environment for the growth of social enterprises across the country, many of which engage with service provision (DTI, 2002; OTS, 2006).
Download the full paper here