Strategic entrepreneurship for resources and innovation: the case of voluntary and community organisations in the south-west of England.

Abstract

This study concerns the application of strategic entrepreneurship as a vehicle for supporting operational capacity of the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in the South-West of England. Ten years ago, the VCS was cash rich, regulation was improving, fundraising had come of age and the doors to public services were open. Although, the needs of people are increasing, government and local authorities’ grants are now not as plentiful. Therefore, the organisations started to generate new ideas to compete for governmental grants allied to fundraising and creating new strategies to support the funds effectively. This support refers to enhancing current and future operational financial, human, operational and other resources as well as organisational innovation that could potentially boost the sector. This study contributes to the application of strategic entrepreneurship into the VCS as there has been a dearth of studies conducted in this area. Consequently, this study has sought to fill the gap, both theoretically and empirically, in relation to the application of strategic entrepreneurship into the sector in the South-West of England. Methodologically, a qualitative research approach is implemented using semi-structured interviews for the collection of primary data for this study. The semi-structured interviews have been conducted with 30 selected owners and top management teams of charities, foundations and associations which are regarded as mainstream Voluntary and Community Organisations (VCOs), social enterprises and members of statutory bodies. This creates conditions for a single case study that will be able to, both explore and more importantly explain, the circumstances surrounding the application of strategic entrepreneurship within the VCS in the South-West of England. The findings and discussion of the study reveal that three conceptual frameworks need to be adapted for mainstream VCOs and social enterprises due to legislative constraints and operational boundaries created by the organisational limitations imposed on the VCS. The first framework shows the potential risk to mainstream VCOs independence resulting from the imposition of strategies by the authorities. The second provides an alternative outcome when social enterprises introduce a degree of independence by the creation of and implementation of business-like organisational structure and strategies. The third, as a result of this study, adopts an amalgamation of the former two to identify the key six aspects of strategic entrepreneurship namely risk, organisational learning, strategic opportunity, generation of ideas, resource and innovation. This identifies and demonstrates the importance of the capability of both social enterprises and mainstream VCOs in establishing their own strategies together with utilising networking, collaboration and partnerships. It is found that the interaction of these aspects shows the significance of networking in strategic entrepreneurship in the VCS.