4,757 research outputs found
Contradictions in social enterprise: do they draw in straight lines or circles?
This paper provides a critical perspective on the discourse surrounding the concept of social enterprise. The paper shifts the lens away from numbers to consider how actors see themselves as social enterprises. The authors make sense of the foundations upon which the concept of social enterprise and entrepreneurship is âdrawnâ â quite literally â by considering linear models and diagrams that analyse social enterprise on a continuum between non-profit (mission) and profit (market) orientation.
A great deal has been made of the success and growth of social enterprise. The imagery in the literature reflects an emphasis on growth resulting from âthe rising tide of commercialisation of non-profit organisationsâ (Dees, 1998) with the result that the CBI now includes over 50,000 organisations in a social enterprise sector (SBS, 2005). Despite reports of rapid growth, there is awareness that âtake-up of social enterprise model ⊠is patchy and fails to reflect the enthusiasm with which it is discussedâ (Stevenson in Westall & Chalkley 2007). We ask why?
A methodological approach involving visual drawings by actors reveals stories and sensemaking experiences of social enterprises. Open conversations enabled the researchers to gain deep insights that would not have been as insightful through a quantitative approach.
The key findings suggest: Firstly, participants report tensions when pursuing social and economic goals simultaneously. Secondly, whilst some welcome opportunities that are emerging, others perceive substantive threats to the third sector. Thirdly, Social enterprise emerges as a diverse and heterogeneous movement located at the boundaries of public, private and voluntary sectors. At each boundary, different constitutional forms and practices are seen.
In conclusion, it is argued that the linear perspective itself gives the impression that there is a âpatchyâ take up of social enterprise. A heterogeneous perspective reveals that theory and policy development is patchy, rather than social enterprise practices.
The unique contribution this research paper offers is within the depth of enquiry and insight into the actual practices provided from those within the field. The critical perspective is taken from the literature and discussed in the settings of the actors in the field which provides practitioners, business support agencies and academics with a different level of empirical investigation that captures an originality and narrative that has barely been explored before.</p
A Comment on String Solitons
We derive an exact string-like soliton solution of D=10 heterotic string
theory. The solution possesses instanton structure in the
eight-dimensional space transverse to the worldsheet of the soliton.Comment: 4 page
Eleven Dimensional Origin of String/String Duality: A One Loop Test
Membrane/fivebrane duality in D=11 implies Type IIA string/Type IIA fivebrane
duality in D=10, which in turn implies Type IIA string/heterotic string duality
in D=6. To test the conjecture, we reproduce the corrections to the 3-form
field equations of the D=10 Type IIA string (a mixture of tree-level and
one-loop effects) starting from the Chern-Simons corrections to the 7-form
Bianchi identities of the D=11 fivebrane (a purely tree-level effect). K3
compactification of the latter then yields the familiar gauge and Lorentz
Chern-Simons corrections to 3-form Bianchi identities of the heterotic string.
We note that the absence of a dilaton in the D=11 theory allows us to fix both
the gravitational constant and the fivebrane tension in terms of the membrane
tension. We also comment on an apparent conflict between fundamental and
solitonic heterotic strings and on the puzzle of a fivebrane origin of
S-duality.Comment: 30 pages (including 5 postscript figures included), LaTeX, Footnote 8
has been removed; the apparent disagreement with Townsend is only one of
semantics, not substanc
Putting String/Fivebrane Duality to the Test
According to string/fivebrane duality, the Green-Schwarz factorization of the
spacetime anomaly polynomial into means that just
as is the anomaly polynomial of the string worldsheet so
should be the anomaly polynomial of the fivebrane worldvolume. To test
this idea we perform a fivebrane calculation of and find perfect
agreement with the string one--loop result.Comment: 14 pages, CERN TH-6614/92, CTP-TAMU 60/9
Zero Modes for the D=11 Membrane and Five-Brane
There exist extremal p-brane solutions of supergravity for
p=2~and~5. In this paper we investigate the zero modes of the membrane and the
five-brane solutions as a first step toward understanding the full quantum
theory of these objects. It is found that both solutions possess the correct
number of normalizable zero modes dictated by supersymmetry.Comment: Minor typos corrected, one reference added, agrees with published
version. 9 RevTeX pages, 1 figure include
Worldvolume Theories, Holography, Duality and Time
Duality transformations involving compactifications on timelike as well as
spacelike circles link M-theory, the 10+1-dimensional strong coupling limit of
IIA string theory, to other 11-dimensional theories in signatures 9+2 and 6+5
and to type II string theories in all 10-dimensional signatures. These theories
have BPS branes of various world-volume signatures, and here we construct the
world-volume theories for these branes, which in each case have 16
supersymmetries. For the generalised D-branes of the various type II string
theories, these are always supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with 16
supersymmetries, and we show that these all arise from compactifications of the
supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories in 9+1 or 5+5 dimensions. We discuss the
geometry of the brane solutions and, for the cases in which the world-volume
theories are superconformally invariant, we propose holographically dual string
or M theories in constant curvature backgrounds. For product space solutions
, there is in general a conformal field theory associated with the
boundary of and another with the boundary of .Comment: 35 pages, harvma
Generalized mirror symmetry and trace anomalies
We consider compactification of M-theory on X7 with betti numbers (b_0, b_1,
b_2, b_3, b_3, b_2, b_1, b_0) and define a generalized mirror symmetry (b_0,
b_1, b_2, b_3) goes to (b_0, b_1, b_2 -rho/2, b_3+rho/2)$ under which rho =
7b_0-5b_1+3b_2 -b_3 changes sign. Generalized self-mirror theories with rho=0
have massless sectors with vanishing trace anomaly (before dualization).
Examples include pure supergravity with N \geq 4 and supergravity plus matter
with N \leq 4.Comment: 19 pages late
String Solitons
We review the status of solitons in superstring theory, with a view to
understanding the strong coupling regime. These {\it solitonic} solutions are
non-singular field configurations which solve the empty-space low-energy field
equations (generalized, whenever possible, to all orders in ), carry a
non-vanishing topological "magnetic" charge and are stabilized by a topological
conservation law. They are compared and contrasted with the {\it elementary}
solutions which are singular solutions of the field equations with a
-model source term and carry a non-vanishing Noether "electric" charge.
In both cases, the solutions of most interest are those which preserve half the
spacetime supersymmetries and saturate a Bogomol'nyi bound. They typically
arise as the extreme mass=charge limit of more general two-parameter solutions
with event horizons. We also describe the theory {\it dual} to the fundamental
string for which the roles of elementary and soliton solutions are
interchanged. In ten spacetime dimensions, this dual theory is a superfivebrane
and this gives rise to a string/fivebrane duality conjecture according to which
the fivebrane may be regarded as fundamental in its own right, with the
strongly coupled string corresponding to the weakly coupled fivebrane and
vice-versa. After compactification to four spacetime dimensions, the fivebrane
appears as a magnetic monopole or a dual string according as it wraps around
five or four of the compactified dimensions. This gives rise to a
four-dimensional string/string duality conjecture which subsumes a
Montonen-Olive type duality in that the magnetic monopoles of the fundamental
string correspond to the electric winding states of the dual string. This leads
to a {\it duality of dualities} whereby under string/string duality the the
strong/weak coupling -duality trades places with the minimum/maximum length
-duality. Since these magnetic monopoles are extreme black holes, a
prediction of -duality is that the corresponding electric massive states of
the fundamental string are also extreme black holes.Comment: 150 pages, TeX, submitted to Physics Reports, 3 figures available on
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Seeing social enterprise through the theoretical conceptualisation of ethical capital
Objectives: Current conceptualisations of social enterprise fail to fully satisfy an understanding of the movement. A focus on the economic implies a business model where deep tensions lie. A focus on social capital offers a different frame of reference, yet both these conceptualisations fail to fully identify the phenomena that is social enterprise. The objective of this paper seeks to fill that gap. Ethical capital is offered here as the missing conceptualisation in the field of social enterprise.
Prior work: Pearce (2003) describes social enterprises as part of the third system, closer to the first system (private business), than the second system (public provision), yet primarily social and secondly a business. Social Enterprises are described as trading organisations in a market (Pearce 2003). A focus and operationalisation for social enterprises to be âbusiness-likeâ and âentrepreneurialâ is well documented (Leadbeater 1997; Dees 1998; Nicholls 2006b).
Approach: Yet, if as part of the third sector, social enterprises are as Dart (2004) suggests; âblurring the boundaries between non-profit and profitâ, but what blurs? What is compromised? What exactly is lost (or gained)? What challenges are there for social enterprises? And is a managerialist ideology taking precedence over the social? This paper provides a conceptual paper that seeks to outline the arguments on the table and develop an ethical capital conceptualisation of social enterprise.
Results: This paper very much aims at starting the process of intellectual debate about the notion of ethical capital in social enterprises. The conclusions of this paper outline further research questions that need to be addressed in order to fully develop this concept. Implications: The current ideology of the neo-classical economic paradigm it is argued in the paper pursues interests towards the self and towards the erosion of the moral basis of association. The outcome leaves society with a problem of low ethical virtue - the implications of this paper are that social enterprises maximise ethical virtue beyond any other form of organisation and as such hold great value beyond their missions and values.
Value: This paper offers great value in the understanding of social enterprise through fresh insight into the conceptualisation. A critical perspective to the current literature is taken and discussed but though the introduction of ethical capital this paper takes our understanding of the value of the sector into another light, providing practitioners, business support agencies and academics alike with a different level of conceptualisation that has not been explored before.</p
Branes, Times and Dualities
Dualities link M-theory, the 10+1 dimensional strong coupling limit of the
IIA string, to other 11-dimensional theories in signatures 9+2 and 6+5, and to
type II string theories in all 10-dimensional signatures. We study the
Freund-Rubin-type compactifications and brane-type solutions of these theories,
and find that branes with various world-volume signatures are possible. For
example, the 9+2 dimensional M* theory has membrane-type solutions with
world-volumes of signature (3,0) and (1,2), and a solitonic solution with
world-volume signature (5,1).Comment: 36 pages, 4 Postscript figures, uses harvmac macr
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