Islamic social enterprises in Bangladesh: Conceptual and institutional challenges

To date, very little attention has been given to Islamic social enterprise although it has huge potential within the context of third sector economy. Addressing this gap, taking Bangladesh as a point of departure, this paper explores how Islamic social enterprise can contribute to enhance the effectiveness of third sector economy. Drawing on lessons from different case studies, it finds that government of Bangladesh should provide a separate legal and regulatory environment for Islamic social enterprise for it to grow in size and scale. In addition to that, the paper came up with three themes which could provide crucial guidelines for Bangladeshi Islamic social enterprise to improve operation and effectiveness. These themes are: leveraging social capital, product and service innovation, and formation of apex institutional bodies. The paper ends with actionable and transparent policy and strategy recommendations for all the stakeholders

Changing Role of HR : A Comparative study of different organization structures in relation to HR & the motivation behind them

Since its big breakthrough in 1980 starting in America (Bredin, 2008), we see yet another shift from traditional to Strategic Human Resources which were basically about two normative model “best fit” vs. “best practice” and their implication in business organizations (Boxall & Purcell, 2000). Scholars like Ulrich (1997), suggested ways about how Human Resource (HR) could contribute in the search for competitive advantage by advocating new organizational structures and roles such as HRSSC (Human Resource Shared Service Center) or the new role of HRBP (Human Resource Business Partner). These new roles and structures can be seen as an extension of “best fit” vs. “best practice” thinking and provide with a tool to cope with challenges faced by today’s organizations. The first and foremost objective of this paper is to come up with a reasonable understanding about these different changes in roles and structures of HR. To do this, it puts the whole change process under “organizational evolution theory” lens and analyzes the whole phenomena to figure out “where do these changes come from” and “what is the implication of these changes for practitioner managers”. To be more precise, this paper applies ecological perspective at organizational and population level suggested by Lovas & Ghoshal (2000) and provides a starting point for future research to apply what Lovas & Ghoshal (2000) called “Guided Evolution” perspective. The next objective of this paper is to check if it is possible to come up with a Key Success Factors (KSF) which would work across different business environments and come up with implications for today’s organizations accordingly. In addition to an extensive literature review, the thesis conducted four semi-structured interviews with three large companies in Sweden applying “qualitative research interview” technique and then analyzed the data with adding more data from other secondary sources. The findings of this work suggest that, the whole change process corresponds to a “variation” cycle of the evolutionary process which should eventually move to a “selection” cycle. The choice and success of these new structures and roles are dependent on factors such as corporate strategies, adequate knowledge of HR or presence/absence of competition and finally suggest that success factors vary from environment to environment and thus it is not possible to come up with a set of Key Success Factors (KSF) which would work across cultures and business environments

Changing Role of HR : A Comparative study of different organization structures in relation to HR & the motivation behind them

Since its big breakthrough in 1980 starting in America (Bredin, 2008), we see yet another shift from traditional to Strategic Human Resources which were basically about two normative model “best fit” vs. “best practice” and their implication in business organizations (Boxall & Purcell, 2000). Scholars like Ulrich (1997), suggested ways about how Human Resource (HR) could contribute in the search for competitive advantage by advocating new organizational structures and roles such as HRSSC (Human Resource Shared Service Center) or the new role of HRBP (Human Resource Business Partner). These new roles and structures can be seen as an extension of “best fit” vs. “best practice” thinking and provide with a tool to cope with challenges faced by today’s organizations. The first and foremost objective of this paper is to come up with a reasonable understanding about these different changes in roles and structures of HR. To do this, it puts the whole change process under “organizational evolution theory” lens and analyzes the whole phenomena to figure out “where do these changes come from” and “what is the implication of these changes for practitioner managers”. To be more precise, this paper applies ecological perspective at organizational and population level suggested by Lovas & Ghoshal (2000) and provides a starting point for future research to apply what Lovas & Ghoshal (2000) called “Guided Evolution” perspective. The next objective of this paper is to check if it is possible to come up with a Key Success Factors (KSF) which would work across different business environments and come up with implications for today’s organizations accordingly. In addition to an extensive literature review, the thesis conducted four semi-structured interviews with three large companies in Sweden applying “qualitative research interview” technique and then analyzed the data with adding more data from other secondary sources. The findings of this work suggest that, the whole change process corresponds to a “variation” cycle of the evolutionary process which should eventually move to a “selection” cycle. The choice and success of these new structures and roles are dependent on factors such as corporate strategies, adequate knowledge of HR or presence/absence of competition and finally suggest that success factors vary from environment to environment and thus it is not possible to come up with a set of Key Success Factors (KSF) which would work across cultures and business environments

Scaling social impact in women-led social enterprises in developing countries: a knowledge-based perspective

Purpose: Although scaling is considered a “hot topic”, very little is known about how knowledge management (KM) assists in scaling social impact. To fill this gap, the authors draw on knowledge-based and social capital theories and investigate how various KM practices and external networks (e.g. bridging social capital) affect scaling social impact in developing countries. Design/methodology/approach Applying structural equation modeling (SEM) with AMOS version 23, the authors conducted a survey with 354 women leaders who are working in women-led social enterprises in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Findings: The authors found that knowledge codification, training and mentoring, and bridging social capital are positively and significantly associated with scaling social impact. Originality/value: This is one of the pioneering study that explore how KM impacts scaling social impact for women-led social enterprises in the context of a developing country. The authors also extend knowledge-based theory by applying it at the individual level. Finally, the authors enhance the understanding of women entrepreneurship by showing that women entrepreneurs in developing countries are also utilizing bridging social capital to overcome challenges associated with scaling social impact