The Rise of Social Enterprise, by Paul Monaghan

Paul Monaghan

Paul Monaghan will be giving a Guest Lecture on Tuesday 9th February at Leeds Beckett University.This lecture is part of the Leeds Business School Guest Lecture Series, organised in association with the Centre for Governance, Leadership and Global Responsibility. The lecture will look at the rise of social enterprise.

The rise of the social enterprise is the great untold story of business. In the UK, there are now over 70,000 social enterprises – operating in almost every sector: from health and social care, to renewable energy, transport, retail, housing and food. Globally, co-operatives alone have more than one billion members.

Their story is much more compelling than the veneer of ‘corporate social responsibility’ that is espoused by large listed businesses – and their impact much more meaningful.

Paul Monaghan is the Director of Up The Ethics which helps pioneers of corporate responsibility and sustainability precipitate much needed systematic change. Paul will be delivering a guest lecture at the Rose Bowl on the 9 February entitled ‘The Rise of the Social Enterprise’

Paul was architect of much of the UK Co-operative movement’s ethical and environmental excellence for nearly two decades. Before that he combined biological sciences research with campaigning. In 1994, he was brought in to radicalise The Co-operative Bank’s approach to corporate ethics and ecology. He went on to lead sustainability programmes across the Co-operative Group in areas as diverse as Food, Finance, Pharmacy, Funerals and Travel. Contributions included the creation of world-class programmes of environmental management, ethical finance, sustainability reporting and a unique commitment to campaigning and progressive public policy intervention.

In April 2013 he left to establish Up the Ethics to help pioneers of corporate responsibility and sustainability precipitate much needed systematic change. A major focus is encouraging and enabling corporate leaders to engage in progressive public policy intervention. Clients range from Axa to Co-operative Energy. In 2014, he topped Global CEO’s “Top 100 CSR Leaders” international poll.

Paul was previously a member of WWF-UK’s Programme Committee, BRE’s Sustainability Board and Accountability’s Council, where he co-chaired their Technical Committee for a number of years. He is a founding Director of the Fair Tax Mark – the next big thing in Corporate Responsibility.

For further information, and to register your attendance for free please visit the Leeds Beckett University events website.

RAKE 2015 Research Projects – Anchor Institutions

 

The Institutional Anchoring of Devolution Deals: Implications for Small First and Local Economies 

Professor John Shutt & Ms Barbara Colledge, Leeds Beckett University, Ms Gill Bentley, University of Birmingham and Dr Lee Pugalis, Northumbria University  

Devolution Deals, such as City Deals and Growth Deals spearheaded by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), have generated interest in England throughout the business and policy community, given they offer the scope to develop tailored enterprise programmes with enhanced flexibilities to address the needs of small firms specific to institutional environments. The principal aim of this 18 month research project is to examine the institutional anchoring of Devolution Deals and analyse the roles performed by small firms to help realise greater entrepreneurial synergies in places. The objectives are:

1. To conceptualise Devolution Deals and highlight their distinctive potentialities.

2. To examine the role of LEPs as a primary institutional anchoring device in deal-making.

3. To analyse the precise roles performed by entrepreneurs and small firms and assess the influence which they exert in crafting deals.

4. To evaluate the effectiveness of Devolution Deals in terms of the extent to they enable small firms a greater role in the determination of policy and programmes that meet entrepreneurship aspirations.

5. To identify innovative practice, devise some practical policy propositions and exchange knowledge.

The research passes through 5 stages, including a call for evidence and desk-based work to examine the notion of Devolution Deals in fostering entrepreneurial activity; development of an analytical framework; case study analysis (involving interviews and focus groups); assessment of deals; and disseminating key findings (involving a conference and presentations). These form the basis for input to policy, future research, and knowledge exchange.

ISBE Research and Knowledge Exchange (RAKE) Fund 2015 Awards

RAKE awards for 2015 is sponsored by Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Lloyds Banking Group, the Federation of Small Business (FSB) and the British Academy of Management (BAM). This year the fund received an unprecendented amount of applications making the review process very difficult and we would like to thank all who contributed to the review process. This year we have been able to make three awards. Click title of project to view synopsis:

 

Adding Value in the Public Sector, by Professor Dean Fathers

Dean Fathers

Professor Dean Fathers will be giving a Guest Lecture on Thursday 28th January at Leeds Beckett University.This lecture is part of the Guest Lecture Series for the Centre for Governance, Leadership and Global Responsibility. The lecture will look at, ‘adding value in the public sector’.

Health organisations in the UK have the double pressure of meeting increasing demands at the same time as meeting financial improvement targets. This lecture will look at this fundamental challenge and suggest that some of the solution might mean that NHS leaders might just need to break with conventional norms and received wisdoms.

Dean became Chair of Nottinghamshire Healthcare in January 2011. Alongside his duties in the NHS, Dean is also a Professor in Practice of Healthcare Management at Cass Business School, a Visiting Professor at Leeds Business School in the Centre for Governance, Leadership and Global Responsibility, a Professorial Fellow with the Institute of Mental Health, Vice Chair of the NHS Confederation’s Mental Health Network and Chair of the Steering Group: National evaluation review of Schwartz Round Centres, King’s College, London. He is also the Senior Independent Director of both JRI Orthopaedics and Higos Insurance, and a Non-Executive Director of Finegreen.

Prior to becoming Chair of Nottinghamshire Healthcare Dean chaired NHS Bassetlaw, had a period as a Non-Executive Director on the South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority and has also chaired Doncaster Health Authority. Dean has a strong interest in leadership/development as well as governance and has consequently held roles on the NHS’s National Training Group, chaired the East Midlands SHA’s Learning and Development Board, was a founder of the East Midlands Leadership Academy, of which he is also a Board Member and also held Board roles on two Workforce Development Boards. He currently sits on the NHS’s Workforce Race Equality Standards (WRES) advisory group and has been involved with both the Accelerated Access Review and the recent Smith Review.

For further information, and to register your attendance for free please visit the Leeds Beckett University events website.

New Year’s Resolutions

For major businesses, to be precise those with turnover of over £36 million, there will be a new, new year’s resolution in 2016. By April they will have to produce a ‘Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement’. The statement must set out what steps they have taken during the financial year to ensure that modern slavery is not occurring in their supply chains or in their own organization. This has to be good news. All agree that this evil must be challenged, and that a key part of that has to be to shine a clear light on business practice, precisely because global business is the context within which this happens. The International Labour Organization estimates annual related profits of over $15 billion.

However, not everybody believes that the Modern Slavery Act 2015 goers far enough (see this Huffington Post article for further details). All it requires is that a statement be made, one which might say that the firm has not taken any steps to combat modern slavery. The only ‘teeth’ the Act has is the provision for the Secretary of State to pursue legal means requiring the organization to provide a statement. If the organization fails to comply with an injunction demanding this, for instance, it will be in contempt of a court order, punishable by an unlimited fine. It will be for consumers, investors and Non-Governmental Organizations to engage and/or apply pressure to encourage a firm to actually do something about modern slavery in its supply chains.  Not surprisingly when a similar approach was tried in the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, there was little attempt to engage the issue.

Betty’s Tea Room, Harrogate

The Act raises huge questions about governance and responsibility. The best examples of governance, such as Unilever, go way beyond a focus on modern slavery, taking in human rights as a whole. And we only need to go as far as Taylors of Harrogate to see a great example of smaller firm engaging its supply chain in a responsible and creative fashion.

But how one can regulate such ethical practice? The Act equates regulation with coercion, with the implication that you cannot regulate good practice. People and organizations have to take their own responsibility for that, the argument goes. Hence, the strategy for the Act is to seek transparency and then to hold practice up for public response. The assumption is that concern for reputation will motivate the businesses in question. But how can that be effective without more teeth, such as the requirement of an independent audit, or governance process which opens itself to external perspectives and expertise (beautifully set out by Unilever)?

Just how the practice of governance should be regulated will be a hot topic throughout this year and the Centre has a series of lectures and public events which will focus on this. Dean Fathers and David Welbourne our two new visiting professors, will be looking at the tensions of governance in the National Health Service and beyond. How can we hold together care and constraint (financial), creativity and consistency (of practice across the piece)? Robert Chia from Glasgow University, one the leading thinkers on critical management, will then look at how we can develop cultures which enable critical challenge. In all this the questions about the nature of regulation remain. Just what kind of regulation can enable the development of moral responsibility, focused in autonomy, not moral automatons? We are planning to hold a symposium on just this topic at the Academy of Management Conference in August.

Rev. Dr. Simon Robinson

Director of Centre for Governance, Leadership and Global Responsibility

 

Heads Up:

We will be sending out invites in the next fortnight for the next academic year’s speakers. Please let Becky know of any thoughts on who you would like to hear.