A Phenomenological Analysis of Attitudes to and Perceptions of Sustainable Development in Social Enterprises in Manchester

Dissertation submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Enterprise at the Liverpool John Moores University PAUL M. HALFPENNY (315632) MGTBMM028

MA Social Enterprise

2009

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to my wife Julie Hotchkiss, and my kids Alfie and Elliot, for their help and patience. And to everyone at John Moores Social Enterprise department for making this such an enjoyable and stimulating experience.

Abstract An analysis, using a phenomenological method, of the perceptions of social enterprise professionals of the significance of sustainable development. Also using a wideranging literature review to unpick the critical factors of relevance within sustainable development. Starting with an assessment of the critical policy and ideological works which have informed the construction of the political philosophy of sustainable development. Also drawing out the ethical bases of Sustainable Development, and exploring the ethical principles which underpin value led businesses. Moving on to a series of semistructured interviews with social enterprise professionals as either directors or founder members. Then undertaking a phenomenological analysis of the results of these interviews, using a Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis technique. Drawing a series of themes from these interviews focussing upon the explicit statements of engagement with sustainable development, and the implicit assessments which can be drawn from the performance management structures used. These would seem to suggest that environmental sustainability is a clearer and more integrated set of imperatives than those proposed in the politics of sustainable development.

Contents 1. INTRODUCTION TO PROBLEM 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Sustainable Development in the UK 2009 a snapshot 2.3 Definitions of Sustainability 2.4 Definitions of Development 2.5 Modernization Theory 2.6 Dependency Theory 2.7 The history of Sustainable Development 2.8 Limits to Growth 2.9 Political History of Sustainable Development 2.10 The philosophical bases of Sustainable Development 2.11 The Ethics of Sustainable Development 2.12 Consequentialism and non-consequentialismin ecological ethics 2.13 The Normative Ethic in Sustainability 2.14 The Axiology of Sustainable Development Ethics 2.15 John Rawls and the Theory of Justice 2.16 Weak versus Strong Sustainability 2.17 Measuring Sustainable Development Meaningfully 2.18 Use of Indicators 2.19 Social Enterprise 3. METHODOLOGY 3.1 Methodology 3.2 Epistemological Rationale 3.3 The Phenomenological Paradigm 3.4 Thematic Analysis 4. METHODS 4.1 Objective 4.2 Development of the Research 4.3 Research Design 4.4 Data Gathering 4.5 Interview Questions 4.6 Project Timetable 4.7 Analytical Framework 4.8 Analysis Parameters 5. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 6. CONCLUSIONS 6.1 General Conclusions 6.2 Thematic Analysis 6.3 Sustainable Development and other Indicator Sets

7. REFLECTIONS 8. REFERENCES 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY 10. APPENDICES Appendix 1 Appendix 2 UK Sustainable Development Indicators set 2009 UK National Sustainable Development Indicator set, 2009, including suggested categories for each indicator Appendix 3 Summaries of development methods in post war world Appendix 4 Political history of sustainable development in summary Appendix 5 Terms of the Brundtland Commission Appendix 6 General Principles, Rights and Responsibilities of the Our Common Future report Appendix 7 Bellagio Principles Appendix 8 Contrasting Positivist versus Phenomenological approaches to qualitative research Appendix 9 Purposive sampling criteria Appendix 10 Semi structured interview format Appendix 11 Statement of Conduct at Interview Appendix 12 Summary Transcripts of interviews, with phenomenological interpretations

Introduction to Problem

Sustainable Development has become a ubiquitous phrase in the 21 st century. It is used in a wide variety of organisational contexts, from the public and governmental sectors through the commercial sector and into the work of NGOs, charities and social enterprises. Examining what sustainable development means to social enterprise is the focus of this piece of research. There are a range of aspects to this, essentially exploratory, piece of research. We will examine the ethics associated with sustainable development and also the ethics associated with social enterprise. We will examine what the relationship between these two might be. We will examine the methods of accounting for sustainable development impacts, and we will compare this with the methods for social and environmental accounting which are currently being used in social enterprises, again to examine what the relationship between the two might be. We will examine the goals of social enterprises and explore what these might have in common, primarily in terms of form rather than content, with those of sustainable development. We will examine the perceptions of social enterprise professionals, with a view to drawing out some initial views on the relevance and correlation of sustainable development to social enterprise, and the relationships and interrelationships which sustainable development implies.

Sustainable Development has come to occupy a central position in contemporary political philosophy and is central to the political agenda of a great many international institutions. As modern socio-economic strategies are developed and unfold, they are

informed at every level by the principles of sustainable development. However, the term sustainable development remains difficult to define. Some commentators Gibbon et al (1995) for instance would argue that just because sustainable development does not lend itself to simple definition does not detract in any way from its robustness as a philosophy. The looseness of the definition however has led to some accusations of misuse and greenwash by organisations which are neither sustainable nor equitable. This looseness of definition may have hindered the ability of social enterprises to engage with the sustainable development agenda, and this too will form part of the topic for this research.

Literature review

2.1 Introduction Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. (Unknown, 1987)Brundtland Commission (Our Common Future), 1987 There are two reasons for putting the Brundtland definition at the very start of this paper one is that, despite its continuous use in the literature, it remains at the very centre of almost all research into and understanding of sustainable development over the last two decades. No matter whether it is research into definitions, goals, indicators, values, policy or practice the original statement from the Brundtland Commission is at the heart of the sustainable development paradigm. But there is another reason to start this paper with the Brundtland definition. Very often the part of the definition which is reproduced is the part about avoiding compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The part that is often omitted however is the making development sustainable.. section in other words, the principle of development is the main driver, and the principle of sustainability is the manner in which we will pursue development. It is important to make this explicit from the outset the implicit message in the standard definition is that development will be pursued and ideally this development should be sustainable. Primacy is not given to sustainability, since that might mean no development. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between the principles and practice of sustainable development on the one hand, and the social enterprise business model a model of planned and controlled development - on the other. The literature review will explore in depth what sustainable development means however, sustainable development has become an immense, amorphous set of

different actions, activities, aims, outputs and policy areas so that a different approach to unpicking these, and arriving at some specific premises about sustainable development, will be taken. The literature review will use a single sustainable development product in this case the UKs baseline Sustainable Development Indicators (2009) as a benchmark. There is no special reason for choosing the UK indicator set of course, being an indicator set from the developed rather than the developing world the emphasis is upon environmental sustainability rather than social and economic equity and inclusion, but using this fixed point of reference allows us to make relative comparison with other inedicator sets and rationales. We will undertake a methodical and comparative review of the various aspects of sustainable development. These will include The history of sustainable development The philosophical and ethical principles of sustainable development The compromises inherent in the strong sustainability versus weak sustainability debate Developed world versus Developing world and sustainability Sustainable Development Policies, from global to local The measurement of sustainable development using indicators Sectoral implications of sustainable development

Using a fixed point like this allows exploration of what is a wide ranging and diverse technical and academic literature, and from a position of specific relevance to the social enterprise sector in the UK which will ultimately be the subject of analysis for the research. 2.2 Sustainable Development in the UK 2009 a snapshot.

This list of sustainability indicators has been devised by the UKs Sustainable Development Commission to reflect the four objectives identified by the commission to define the direction of travel in terms of sustainable development. These are social progress which recognises the needs of everyone effective protection of the environment prudent use of natural resources maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment. (2002)(Sustainable Development Commission 2002)

Currently the UK sustainable development commission uses a set of 68 indicators against which the UKs sustainable development performance is measured. These are listed in Appendix 1 -

Of these indicators, the first thirty one indicators are concerned primarily with environmental sustainability. Of the next thirty seven, there is an uneven spread across social, environmental and economic indicators again these are listed in Appendix 2 These indicators lay out a range of areas for measurement of activities which contribute to the development of the country and each one can be further divided into sub-indicator sets, in some cases almost infinitely so. How have these indicator objectives and sets been developed? What have been the premises from which these indicators have been designed? Sustainable Development is a combination of two principles. One of these is sustainability, an environmental construct which relates to the ability of a system to endure despite the pressure of external and internal forces. The other is development and in this context the word relates explicitly but not exclusively to economic development.

Sustainable development is therefore, at first glance, a form of compromise between these two constructs. The critical historical and philosophical roots of sustainable development as a set of aims and policy mechanisms lie in environmental and ecological sustainability, and beyond this in the conservation movements .These are coupled with the classic economic and by extension social drivers of continuing and expanding growth. There has been considerable analysis and study of the ability of environmental systems to continue to yield resources for the use of humans (see for instance, (Gordon, 1954) maximum sustainable yield, (Hardin, 2001), carrying capacity) The instinctive position is that no system can increase yield indefinitely without the capital of the system being either devalued or decreased. We shall discuss this in more detail when we examine weak versus strong sustainability. The principle of environmental sustainability however is that increasing pressure upon a system must lead to the systems degeneration.

2.3

Definition of Sustainability

(Kidd, 1992) identifies six roots of modern sustainability thinking. These are Biosphere Resources / environment Ecological / carrying capacity Critique of technology / non substitution No growth (economic) Eco-development

Of these, perhaps the most familiar will be the Ecological / carrying capacity approach, which would also include the Maximum Sustainable Yield device for assessing the maximum pressures which can be brought to bear upon environmental systems. These roots all relate to the pressures brought to bear by human beings upon the ecology of the planet, and relate to not only the demands of an increasing population, but also to the demands for increasing consumption on the part of each individual. Population growth, and the planets ability to sustain indefinite growth has

been the subject of much debate, and has sharpened awareness of the issues surrounding sustainable use of resources.

Sustainability is a term which has been primarily associated with the ability of environmental systems to endure. It is of particular relevance to the ways in which human beings engage with environmental systems and most critically, how human beings have engaged with environmental systems in the last two or three centuries. (Du Pisani, 2006) shows us that, up until the 17 th century human beings did not have the technological skills or capacity to seriously threaten the sustainability of large scale environmental systems and while they could heavily influence landscapes and ecologies they were not equipped to wholly and irrevocably - destroy them. Critically the first mention of sustainability comes in the 18 th century, when demands upon timber production across Europe were so severe that extreme timber shortages were forecast Hans Carl von Carlowitz in his Sylvicultura Oeconimica (1713, cited in du Pisani) proposed that greater forest management was needed to ensure that there was continuing timber resources. It is useful to look at the European timber issue in the 18th century as it provides an early precursor for both sides of the entire sustainable development debate. At this time there were a great many demands upon timber production it was a primary fuel source, ships were built from it, and houses and furniture too. The mining industries depended upon timber, as did the growing steel industry and later the paper industry would make huge demands upon timber production. As Europe became increasingly affluent with increasing consumption and an increasing population and with increasing international markets for goods creating demand also so timber consumption should have continued to increase but it didnt. Instead, technological adaptations changed whole industries ships were primarily built from metal, not wood. Houses were built from stone quarried and transported in such large quantities as to make it cheaper than wood. Iron and steel production increased exponentially and the coal mining industry along with it, both of which reduced demand upon timber supplies as both fuel and construction materials. In fact, while timber was a primary resource for a period of economic growth, it was precisely because that resource was under pressure, combined with the technological quest for other, more efficient methods of shipping, energy, etc, that demand for timber was reduced. It was not to be long, however,

before the same discussions were being had about coal (Jevons, 1866) and oil (Pinchot, 1947). Here we can see in summary the argument of weak sustainability versus strong sustainability to which we will return later in this research the belief that technological advance can adequately replace natural types of capital. And here also, according to Meadows et al {Document Not In Library}, we see one of the key factors in the start of the Industrial Revolution the substitution of a resource (coal) and a set of technologies for a dwindling resource in this case, timber. This historical precedent is one which informs much contemporary thinking on the ability to substitute apparently incomparable types of capital.

2.4

Definition of Development

In the same way that the word sustainable has come to take on more and more meaning, sometimes simply according to the whims of the people who are using it, so the word development in the context of sustainable development has accrued layers of meaning, often dependent upon the user. According to (Du Pisani, 2006), while the contemporary use may relate to the development of economies which are excluded from all of the benefits of the modern global economy, the word has its roots not only in simple economic growth, but in the notion of progress. Du Pisani sees the emergence of this paradigm all the way back to St Augustine and his City of God, wherein the idea of human history as purposeful and progressive finds one of its milestones in the Christian tradition. This notion, that the human race was progressively improving or proceeding to more and more improved states, was one that attracted and was reinforced by both Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers except that science and technology, rather than a metaphysical deity, became the cornerstones of the process. Progress became a secularised heir to the Christian ideal of salvation ({Document Not In Library},, certainly after the Industrial Revolution. In addition, the linkage has been made all the way through the 15 th to the 20th centuries that progress and economic growth are one and the same thing.

It is with primarily environmental degradation along with the financial inequity which is a hallmark of the liberal economic system that the first contradictions in the notion of perpetual progress began to be seen. According to Harris (Harris, 2000), this notion of progress was at the centre of the work of contemporary post war economists such as Rostow, who, when he published The Stages of Economic Growth in 1960 {Document Not In Library}, postulated that all countries could and should - aspire to become mature high mass consumption economies without the need for communist revolution or the like. In other words, if every state and every country can become high mass consumption economies - there are no limiting factors for economic growth. As such and this has been a claim which many theorists have accepted the clear goal of economic development policy was to raise living standards throughout the world (Harris 2000 p3). How this was to be achieved and whether or not it was a desirable goal of economic development has been a critical contention for theorists. These have divided into four distinct camps, though the first two of these are essentially unfashionable now Structuralists, Linear Growth theorists, Modernization (sic) theorists; and Dependency theorists. Understanding these latter two approaches to the issue of development are critical to our understanding of the term in sustainable development. For the sake of completeness, the Structuralist and Linear Growth theories are summarised at Appendix 3.

2.5

Modernization theory

Modernization theory proposes that global development should proceed according to a Western model. In modernization theory, according to Peet (Peet, 1999), cited in Du Pisani), development meant assuming the mental models of the West (rationalization), the institutions of the West (the market), the goals of the West (high mass consumption) and the culture of the West (worship of the commodity) (1999: 85 86).Modernization theory therefore is a more of the same approach, which postulates that there is mutuality only where there is mutual benefit. Organisation like the International Monetary Fund, The World Trade Organisation and the World Bank

will promote a modernization approach to development of emerging economies and particularly after the debt crisis, when traditional (ie classical) methods of economic structuring and activity have become more popular once again. Now these international organisations are once again encouraging deregulation and privatisation and the opening up of local and national markets to international capital and expertise. It will be apparent that it is the negative effects of deregulated market economies described by Harris ((Harris, 2000)) as those effects which lead to uneven distribution of economic benefits, and major negative impacts upon the environment and existing social structures which provides one of the primary drivers in the development of sustainable development thought. Some commentators for example Richard Norgaard (Norgaard, 1994)) has gone further, describing the shortcomings of Modernization as a betrayal Modernism, and its more recent manifestation as development, have betrayed progress while a few have attained material abundance, resource depletion and environmental degradation now endanger many and threaten the hopes of all to come Modernism betrayed progress by leading us into, preventing us from seeing and keeping us from addressing interwoven environmental, organizational and cultural problems Norgaard (1994 p2)

2.6

Dependency theory

Dependency theory is less a proposal for future development and more a critique of the existing structures and systems. Coming from a neo-Marxist position it postulates that contemporary development policy is geared towards maintaining the economically dominant position of the developed world against the interests of developing world economies. In this theoretical structure the development is essentially one way and is related solely to access to raw materials and to cheap labour, the value of which accrues to the developed worlds companies. Further, Dependency theorists (such as Raul Prebisch, Hans Singer) would argue that the

developed world will actively seek to maintain the dependence of developing world economies on their developed world counterparts. Dependency theory has produced an offshoot, world systems theory which further examines the interrelationships between the neo-classical economies in the industrial and post-industrial economies on the one hand, and the developing and undeveloped periphery countries which are further subdivided into periphery and semiperiphery countries. The periphery model is taken straight from Marxist analysis and reflects the premise whereby the core group of people be that of a national or global system are able to exploit all of the people on the periphery, by dint of having greater control over capital, skills, resources and institutions. While Dependency theory had some traction in the 1950s and 1960s (with who?), it was undermined by the rise of economies like India, Brazil and China. World System theory attempts to reinforce dependency theory by identifying the semi-periphery as a third status which the core will permit to exist though if theorists carry on sub-dividing the periphery we will simply end up with a model which is indistinguishable from the linear stages growth model.

However, while it is undoubtedly true that these values have informed policy and policy makers how much have the principles of dependency theory informed sustainable development policymakers?

2.7

The history of sustainable development

As we have already discussed there have been critical moments in the histories of both sustainability as a label for an eco-centric, conservationist approach and development, as a synonym for both progress and for growth, and as a normative term used to describe a commitment to (something like) equity in social and economic development. The phrase sustainable development however is a relatively new one, and is a phrase which primarily came out of the identification by theorists in the 1950s and 1960s of the negative effects if not outright contradictions

 of increasingly deregulated markets and their activities as they related to exploitation of natural resources and of the creation of easy to exploit but socially unsustainable social forms across the world. There were precursors to this understanding in the 1960s work by for instance Rachel Carson (The Silent Spring) and Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) but the birth of the movement that was to be ultimately branded sustainable development came in 1972, with the publication of the Club of Romes The Limits to Growth.

2.8

Limits to Growth

"If the present growth trends in world population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource completion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime in the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity". The Limits to Growth According to Kates et al (Leiserowitz, Kates, & Parris, 2005), the notion of development is one of four central pillars of aspirational political and social thinking to have emerged and been enshrined post-war the other three being peace, freedom and the environment (Kates et al 2005 p10). While peace and freedom have been long established objects for the consideration of political philosophers and scientists for many centuries, and development, in the form of progress has a considerable history in the works of the likes of Hobbes, Stuart-Mill, Comte and Hegel, the treatment of environment as a fundamentally significant principle is a relatively recent occurrence. Again, according to Kates et al, it is in the global political processes and institutions which have been developed post-war that these principles have become central and 1972 with the publication of The Limits to Growth is one of the most critical milestones in terms of the introduction of both development and most particularly the environment to this group of fundamental philosophical principles. These critical issues have been the cornerstones for policy making at every national and international organisation in the last forty-plus years with sustainable

development providing the banner for attempts made to Link together these themes in single political movements.

In the same way that the Brundtland Commissions simple definition of sustainable development has become a fixed point in the literature, so has The Limits to Growth even down to its title. Neo-classical economists can model all manner of sceanrios which do not show limits on economic growth. Williams and McNeill (Williams & Mcneill, 2005) cite the infinite growth models famously popularised in the seventies by Solow (1974) and Stiglitz (1979) (both these cited in Petith (Petith, 1999)) and of course in the work of Milton Friedman, most particularly Capitalism and Freedom. Equally, ecologists are acutely aware that in ecological systems there are always limiting forces (internal and external) to each system. The combination of the two concepts (limit and growth), so central to each discipline, show the unbalanced equation, the contradiction, at the centre of the debate on progress and economic growth. It also provides the first formal refutation of the wildly optimistic post-war growth model in which economics and finance provide the context in which the environment should be understood, rather than essentially human activities which will always be constrained by the environment. The premise of The Limits to Growth is simple the impacts of human economic growth on the planet come under two broad headings the exploitation of resources and the generation of waste. Exploitation includes use of non-renewables, such as minerals, and over-exploitation of renewables, such as fish stocks, so that the capital of the stocks is being consumed rather than the interest. This over-exploitation leads to destruction of vast tracts of natural habitats. The disposal of waste or undesired by-product relies on sink the capacity of the earth to hold or process increasing quantities of waste and toxic by-product. So demands are made upon the earth from two, opposite directions. The combination of these factors gives us the ecological footprint of current activities which can be weighed against the calculable capacity the carrying capacity of the earth. On this basis the modellers could calculate when particular consumption and growth patterns would lead to what was termed overshoot the point at which consumption overtakes carrying capacity. The Limits to Growth the 30 year update team calculate that

humanity overshot some time in the 1980s and is now living at approximately 20% beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. This is of course an average across all nations famously, if we were all consuming at the level of the United States, we would require five Earths. The recommendations of The Limits to Growth are simple also that technological advance, behavioural change, longer term planning and political will must be brought to bear so that the worst case scenarios of short term, unregulated, unrestricted market economics can be avoided. In Limits to Growth The 30 Year Update (2004) we are reminded of a scenario damage to the ozone layer where the combination of these above interventions can lead to positive change, preventing or recovering from overshoot.

In the same year as the publication of The Limits to Growth, the United Nations held a Conference on the Human Environment (the Stockholm Conference) which also related to these interconnected issues of society, environment and economic growth and activity, and again was central to teasing our precisely what the premises were for sustainable development. 2.9 Political History of Sustainable Development

We have summarised the other milestones in the political and operational history of sustainable development in Appendix 4. We make reference here to what we consider to be the critical historical moment in the evolution of the philosophy of sustainable development, the Brundtland Commission World Commission on Environment and Development (1982) and the publication of Our Common Future (1987) The Brundtland Commission, as it is also known, was created by the United Nations to address "the accelerating deterioration of the human environment and natural resources and the consequences of that deterioration for economic and social development." The Commission was formed in 1983, and the terms of the commission are summarised at Appendix 5

The Commission (named the Brundtland Commission after its chairman, Gro Harlem Brundtland) took four years to report its findings and to produce its report. Titled Our Common Future (Unknown, 1987), it contains the following famous summary Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:

the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs.

So we can see immediately the effect of the thinking behind the Limits to Growth but there is another principle of significance here too: though over-population had been considered to be a fundamental driver to the problems of environmental degradation, now the interpretation of the significance of this driver had been changed most of the population growth in the world was (and is) taking place in the developing South rather than in the developed North yet most of the consumption of resources takes place in the developed North. So the solutions to the problems of environmental degradation were linked to the appetites of consumers as well as to their numbers. In addition, the commission used the notions of inter-generational equity, and its logical extension, intra-generational equity in other words, asserting the rights of generations not yet born to the same opportunity as current generations (see Rawls below) and equally asserting that, if generations of people had an indivisible right to equality of opportunity, then by extension so did the current generation, regardless of where they were on the planet. While sustainability as a construct relating to the environment had gained some traction, and could conceivably work alongside neo-liberal economic systems, the extension of the definition of sustainable development to contain a large conceptual core of equity, meant that there was more obvious friction between the policy goals of capitalist economies and sustainable development policy makers. However, this increased politicisation of the sustainable development model marked the increased investment in the theory from countries excluded from the wealth of previous economic development.

The solutions which Our Common Future proposed were primarily to do with the development of a policy and legal framework which could support nations to work towards sustainable development, both individually and collectively. The General Principles, Rights and Responsibilities summarise the conclusions, and are summarised at Appendix 6

2.10

The philosophical bases of sustainable development

We have drawn out the critical history of sustainable development as a political agenda. But what are the philosophical principles which underpin it? It is apparent that what started out as a purely environmental set of principles in terms of the discussions about the protection and conservation of both renewable and non-renewable resources, became something else when sustainable development evolved into a contemporary political agenda. We will briefly consider the philosophical and ethical bases of this phenomenon, starting with the environmental and ecological philosophies and expanding this to include first the economic context of theory and philosophy, and then the social and political influences which have shaped the final philosophy. This transition, which sustainable development has undergone from a purely environmentalist perspective on resource and ecology conservation to a social, economic, political and environmental philosophy, can be pictured using the famous Russian Dolls example Figure 1: From Venn diagram to Russian doll explanations of Sustainable Development Venn diagram explanation

Russian doll explanation

Source: O'Riordan (O'Riordan, 1997)

Though this conceptual model is intended to re-frame how we conceive of economic development, it also shows the journey which the principles of sustainability have undertaken, in terms of political positioning and policy development, over the last forty years. What was considered to be a set of activities and concerns which overlapped with economic concerns, is now re-presented as the context in which all economic activity is undertaken. We will examine this notion in some more depth presently however, it is worth noting at this point that Environmental limits may be being used here as a synonym for concrete reality and it is in no way certain that all economic activity, or indeed all economic capital, is constrained by physical reality cyber-capital for instance, or simply the innovative and creative process which creates new types of intellectual capital. However, we shall return to this. The next aspect of this review will be the ethics associated with sustainable development.

2.11

The Ethics of Sustainable Development

The Axiology of environmental and ecological ethics In this section we will build upon the identification of sustainable development as an extension of environmental sustainability. We will examine the roots of environmental ethics and then see what relation these have to the ethics of sustainable development.

Modern technology has introduced actions of such novel scale, objects, and consequences that the framework of former ethics can no longer contain them . No previous ethics had to consider the global condition of human life and the far-off future, even existence of the race. These now being an issue demands, in brief, a new conception of duties and rights, for which previous ethics and metaphysics provide not only the principles, let alone a ready doctrine Hans Jonas (1984), cited in (Kristensen & ALroe, 2001)

Ecological or environmental ethics is a quite ancient concern of humanity Du Pisani (2006) cites the contributions of Plato, Strabo, Columella, Varro and Pliny the Elder amongst the early philosophers. These are essentially pragmatic, empiricist reflections upon causes and effects witnessed and suggestions made for correction - a simple approach which may well (in the final analysis) underpin much of contemporary sustainability thinking, but which is essentially about good husbandry. Contemporary, normative ethical positions associated with sustainable development have their roots in the contemporary conservation movement, which has grown up in reaction to the increasing effects of population increase, industrialisation and technological advance upon the physical environment. Although he is not widely considered to be explicitly a philosopher, much of contemporary conservation and environmental ethics is rooted in the work of American Aldo Leopold, and most particularly his essay The Land Ethic (Leopold, 1948). Here Leopold is one of the

first to place human activity firmly in the context of the natural environment, and perhaps most importantly makes reference quite explicitly to the conflict between economic activity, individual freedom and the ability of the environment to absorb the effects of such activity indefinitely. Leopold suggested that we were on the verge of a new ethic, an ethic which was both an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity. This belief is echoed in the quote from Hans Jonas which commenced this section. The interrelationship between humans and the environment, while an ancient curiosity for philosophers, is now a critical field of analysis as we seek to constrain our new found capacity to alter our environment, sometimes irrevocably. In fact, this statement from Leopold in the Land Ethic that ...a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise, has become one of the mainstays of environmental ethics and in some cases has become a fundamental normative ethic (for instance for J. Baird Callicott (1980) ) in its own right. Leopold though was a forester, not a philosopher, and while the sentiment of his work has had profound and far reaching impacts in terms of defining the issue of environmental degradation and exploitation, and humans responsibilities thereof, the ethical premises of his work, expressed in such a way as to form the basis for a wider ranging normative ethic, have exercised contemporary philosophers considerably. There are a multitude of different approaches to identifying and substantiating the premises for a normative ethic of (first) the environment, and (by extension, sometimes logical) of sustainable development. First of all we can identify the core ethical premises as being either anthropocentric or non anthropocentric (ecocentric) in other words, either putting humans at the centre of our ethical construct, or giving some sort of equivalency to non-human agents and objects. It has been argued (Goodpaster, (Goodpaster, 1979)), that the central problem of modern ethics is the problem of overcoming egoism but we can see equally that traditional ethics, which proposes morality and ethics as purely human attributes and activities, creates an initial obstacle to proposing an ethic of objects other than humans. Immediately we can see the dichotomy between sustainability and sustainable development since contemporary sustainable development puts universal human progress at the heart of its values and aspirations, whereas environmental sustainability prioritises the protection of our life support system. We can see too in this anthropocentric versus

ecocentric debate that egoism is at the heart of it precisely how we place human beings in moral relation to the natural world. Interestingly, and perhaps as a useful extreme on the anthropocentric / ecocentric spectrum, there are American libertarians (Treanor, 1997) who will take some of their premises even from Genesis, which give mankind dominion over nature and who see this dominion as consistent with the principles of individual liberty which provide the basis for the American political philosophy. (include here whats her name?). This position that nothing should interfere with individual human liberty, and that the earth is provided to meet all human needs and will continue to do so can be labelled as the unenlightened egoism at one extreme end of the anthropocentric spectrum. It is a position which has some consistency and coherence if we propose that human beings only have the capacity to reorganise nature, rather than to fundamentally reconstruct it and although there is much denialism around the issue, it would seem with global warming for instance, that human beings categorically do have the capacity to restructure the earth perhaps even in such a way as to threaten the existence of life on the planet. It is perhaps also no coincidence that the sort of economics-centred libertarianism posited as the fulcrum of human dynamics by the likes of Adam Smith has also become known by the shorthand egoism. Whether it is fair or correct to equate the two will be discussed in due course. However, what we can draw out as a particular perspective on this debate is this an economics-focused egoism will lend itself to an accounting approach to sustainability. That said while the consequences of such an ethic may be cataclysmic for all of us or may be deeply unpleasant for many of us it should be noted that this approach is internally consistent if not consequentially something that we would all want! The ultimate conclusion of such a position is that competition and external pressures will create various types of competition for resources and that this competition will lead to a resolution of the issue for good or ill. This approach which obviously overlaps strongly with the philosophical principles of Adam Smith's world view represents the dominant ideology of our age. Perhaps of greater significance, the aspirations implicit in this approach have hugely influenced the evolution of sustainable development as a global political tool.

2.12

Consequentialism and non-consequentialism in environmental ethics.

Traditionally we have been able to define different moral systems according to their implied or explicit relationship to consequences. Some ethical systems are based entirely upon a recognition that the consequences of an action gives the criteria by which an action can be judged morally. Non-consequentialist philosophies are based upon either the character of the act or the character of the actor, regardless what the outcome might be. Famously, the egoist position of which we have already written is an expression of the philosophical position of Adam Smith is a consequentialist philosophy it focus upon the consequences for the actor only though, and argues that (in the context of economic activity certainly) that it is impossible to know all of the effects of an action, and therefore actions are undertaken with specific consequences in mind for the agent themselves. Equally and of great relevance in the field for sustainable development as we shall see philosophers like Kant and more recently Rawls have been influential in the overlap between the sustainability and the sustainable development debates as their normative philosophical outlooks provide a potential framework for moral decision making which is not primarily egotistical and begins to address the problem identified in the Hans Jonas quote above. While we will discuss Kant and Rawls in relation to the ethical premises of sustainable development presently. Equally, Paul Thompson (1996) suggests that we can create premises for a sustainability ethic from two perspectives one being resource sufficiency, and one being functional integrity. The first of these allows for this purely accounting approach to be taken we should protect and increase the total capital available to future generations. The second attributes essential value to both critical elements in a system and the system itself and as such requires a more holistic, balance of quantitative and qualitative approach. This resource sufficiency (essentially anthropocentric) versus functional integrity (essentially ecocentric) approach parallels one of the critical issues of sustainable development, that of weak sustainability versus strong sustainability. We will come onto this issue, as one of the practical application of the principles of sustainable development, presently. 2.13 The Normative ethics in sustainability

Traditionally we distinguish between Descriptive and Normative approaches to ethics. Descriptive relates to a primarily empiricist approach to gathering date and information about different ethical positions, and allowing comparison and constructive analysis. Normative ethics of the other hand give instruction on what should be the case. In contemporary ethics we have moved much more towards a descriptive, relativist approach. In the context of environmental ethics such a relativist approach is not satisfactory instinctively, as people witness destruction of ecosystems, pollution and reduction of non-renewable resources as well as harm being done to the capacity of the entire planet to support life, they want to be able to discuss this in terms of right and wrong. So contemporary environmental ethics have become much more normative ironically at a time when most human-centric ethical systems are becoming more descriptive. Palmer (1998) identifies four broad headings of normative ethical development in contemporary environmental ethics Individualist consequentialism, Individualist deontological environmental ethics, Collectivist environmental ethics (Palmer explains her decision to use the word collectivist rather than systemic, which might be a more familiar label in the 21 st century) and Deep ecology. This latter we can equate some what with Leopold's Land Ethic and with the deep ecology movement developed by Arne Naess. The collectivist or systemic approach can be summarised as a whole earth approach, again with resonances of Leopold and Callicott. Individualist deontological environmental ethics would include the likes of Paul Taylor and would represent an approach to environmental ethics which can be summarised as assigning intrinsic (what he describes as teleological worth to every living thing (hence the individualist tag as opposed to assigning value to, for instance, a species). Finally, Individualist consequentialism would include the egotist positions we have touched upon elsewhere. Palmer's summaries are useful in the context of this research because they allow us to see broadly the differing approaches to constructing a conceptual relationship between humans and the environment. Ultimately it is this relationship which is at the heart of the sustainable development agenda.

As indicated above, these normative ethical positions on the environment can be set upon a spectrum. At one end would be the extreme egoists (the individualist consequentialists) who believe that humans are the only moral agents, that the earth has been given to us for our needs and that any environmental damage is only relevant in so far as it negatively effects humans. If this were a purely descriptive spectrum we might find at the other end groups of stone age hunter gatherers as it is a normative spectrum, a spectrum of the normative positions that people take, we would have to place something like a primitivist or an anarcho-primitivist to counterbalance the egoist and ultimately place the Deep Ecologist at this end of the spectrum too. Curiously both of these positions would almost place humans outside the system the egoists would consider themselves morally outside the environmental system, the primitivists would consider themselves consciously placed outside of the environmental system in terms of impacts. Most other normative approaches to sustainability and to sustainable development exist somewhere on this spectrum. These will include but not be limited to enlightened anthropocentrism Alternate techno-ecologism Rights and Duties (Virtue ethics) Ecological Economics (Kapp KW, Georgescu-Roegen, N) Deep Ecology (Arne Naess) Eco-Marxism and eco-socialism Free Market ecology Sustainable Developmentalism (both weak and strong) adapted from The Complex History of Sustainability (Djalali & Vollaard, 2008) Each of these philosophies represents a specific normative position on the issues of environmental ethics however some, such as sustainable development itself can be seen to be at the anthropocentric end of the spectrum giving as they do greater primacy to social development than to environmental protection. Other, more anthropocentric approaches will include the enlightened anthropocentrism position, which mirrors precisely The effects of this anthropocentric vs ecocentric tension

are reflected in the weak versus strong sustainability issue in sustainable development itself a tension to which we shall return. However at this point it is important to make explicit that sustainability as it relates to the environment on the one hand, and sustainable development as it relates to social and economic development in such a way as to minimise harm to the environment on the other, are not synonymous. As such, while there may be some overlap between these two approaches, equally there are some areas where the various normative ethics (and to a lesser extent the value ethics) are in conflict with sustainable development as an approach. Having made the distinction between the various types of normative environmental ethics clear (ha!) we will now move on to examine the normative ethics as developed and adopted in the political agenda of sustainable development.

2.14

The Axiology of Sustainable Development Ethics

Historically sustainable development has emerged as a compromise political philosophy. As we have seen it has taken as a starting point the position that unlimited economic development would appear to be impossible, a growth constrained by finitude of resources, carrying capacity of existing natural systems and the capacity of the environment to absorb increasing volumes of wastes and toxic by-products of industrialisation. In other words, it has been premised upon an instinctive awareness that there must come, sooner or later, a point at which continued growth is not possible. This limits to growth position leads to relatively simple abstract conclusions about how we manage resources and protect systems so that they are not threatened by collapse. However, there are a great many political reasons why such conclusions are not palatable. One is that such an approach leads to greater management and regulation of economic activities and this conflicts sharply with the libertarian economic system in which we live and challenges directly the individual freedom principles which form the basis for the American political philosophy as enshrined in their Constitution. Another political driver and one which has hugely influenced the evolution of sustainable development as a political

philosophy is the desire to not only lift more of the worlds poor out of poverty, but to allow people in the developing world the opportunity to participate fully in the global process of economic growth. As we have identified above, there have been a variety of different approaches to stimulating and encouraging economic development in the developing world but some of the more managed economy approaches have proved less than successful and as such we are left, increasingly, with the neoliberal economics consistent with and perhaps central to the American way of life, emerging as a dominant practice purely as a result of the perceived economic successes. Organisations like the World Trade Organisation exist essentially to promote and expand this method of human interaction (it is difficult to constrain it purely by saying that it is solely an economic practice). As such and once again it is therefore important to juxtapose sustainable development with neo-liberal economics, since both philosophically and practically there are specific tensions even in the areas of overlap between the two positions. The original premises of environmental sustainability in relation to this conundrum seem inadequate. Primarily geared towards the protection of our planet, environmental ethics as we have seen are premised upon the limitations inherent in a closed system like the earth, and how we should respond to that. However the political and economic aspirations of the vast majority of the people on the planet cannot or should not - be ignored and as such what we are charged with is rather to manage the growth in such a way as to make it unsustainable for longer. This is the conflict at the heart of sustainable development, and this is why sustainable development is an essentially compromised agenda. At the same time however, almost all scientific research and analysis shows that the pressure put upon the world and its resources is reaching a point where it is literally intolerable. The only cogent alternative position to this is that the invisible hand of the market will correct this unbalanced equation in some way whether it is cataclysmically or not. The normative ethic which most contributes to resolving this conflict at least ostensibly is provided by John Rawls in his Theory of Justice. This has contributed the final, normative plank in the construction of the political philosophy that is sustainable development.

2.15

John Rawls and Theory of Justice

Rawls is famous for attempting to resolve the ancient philosophical tensions between liberty and equality. He does this using the principle of justice. Famously, Rawls reduces Justice to two distinct premises or principles First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others And inequalities of liberty should be arranged so that

a) they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle). b) offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity Rawls (1971) These principles provide a firm ethical basis for the emergent sustainable development ethic, because they directly underpin the notion of our ethical responsibility to future generations intergenerational justice. This leads quite straightforwardly to a notion of intragenerational justice since we cannot meaningfully offer rights to all of generations yet unborn which we do not offer to all people currently alive. While the concept of Rawlsian justice might provide an ideal premise in bolstering the principles of sustainable development as a complete social, economic and environmental philosophy,it doesn't do so without complications if intragenerational equity is an explicit aim of sustainable development, then sustainable development will be set squarely against neo-liberal economics and it can also be argued that social equity will set sustainable development against environmental sustainability.

2.16

Weak versus Strong Sustainability

The characteristics which define the differences between strong and weak sustainability are those of monetization of different types of resources, and the substitutability of resources as capital types. This process of monetization in other words, assigning an economic value to specific activities which cause environmental degradation, and to the environmental degradations themselves came about as part of a shift in the economic understanding of environmental degradation. Here, the use of the economic concept of external costs and benefits of economic activities is applied to businesses which have environmental impacts. For instance, any business which generates pollution creates a cost associated with their business which will have economic impacts elsewhere economic impacts that are, in other words, external to that business's accounts. These external costs will not figure in their own accounts, and will not therefore affect the profitability and thus the viability of the business but these economic impacts are no less real, and the costs have to be met by someone, somewhere, at some time. The classic definition of both external costs and benefits is given by Kenneth Arrow (1969). It has particular relevance to environmental economics as it demonstrates the inefficiencies of the market system in not allocating directly the costs to the environment of commercial activities even when these have considerable and far-reaching effects and economic implications for the whole population of the planet. Climate change and the effects of increased CO2 and other greenhouse gases have been identified as ...a potentially catastrophic global externality and one of the worlds greatest collective action problems

Using externalities is a very useful method of identifying and accounting for the wider impacts of commercial activities. Some of these rainforest logging, and CO 2 production from fossil fuel combustion for instance have terrifically far reaching and complex impacts and therefore very complex cost implications, often too difficult to calculate. While many, many environmental and social impacts of commercial or industrial activity are amenable to simple financial calculation and we will come on to the methods for this as we seek to link the accounting methodologies to social enterprise as a specific business model many environmental externalities are not. In addition, many environmental impacts it is argued - should

not be reduced to purely their financial implications. However, it is this reductivism which has contributed to the notion of substitutability of different types of capital for each other and has also provided a potetntially useful basis for measuring just how immoral certain acts might be.

Plainly economics plays a large part in the conceptualisation of sustainable development. Simply put, weak and strong sustainability differ primarily on how much economic thinking and procedure should inform the practice. The more economics are brought to bear upon the environmental aspect of sustainable development, the weaker it is. The more environmental resources are treated as having non-quantifiable economic value in other words, the more that environmental resources are treated as having an inherent value, rather than purely economic value (ie, value relative to humans), then the stronger that sustainability is. The more that we attempt to assign economic value to natural resources and then suggest that there is a high degree of substitutability between those types of capital in other words, that we can substitute increases in technological capital for reductions in non-renewable minerals for instance then the weaker the sustainability. Some commentators Morse and Bell (2008 p13) for instance argues that weak and strong sustainability are mutually exclusive approaches rather than variations on a theme. Other commentators have suggested that in fact sustainable development as a whole, with its emphasis upon economic growth, is always going to be compromising to the environment the only thing which will change will be the rate of degradation. Rennings and Hoymeyer (1997) for instance, point out that the universally substitutable systems would suggest that the economic impacts of climate change could be offset by more projects to protect pandas a difficult to defend substitution. In some instances though for instance the carbon offsetting products there is an argument that these are economic models of sustainable development which do have, at least some degree of, capturing of the externalities and also a calculable method of identifying carbon emissions and of the costs and ways associated with offsetting this, both now and in the future.

2.17

Measuring sustainable development meaningfully

We have made reference to the article by Kates, Parris and Leiserowitz What is Sustainable Development? (2005) In this we are introduced to the idea that a definition of sustainable development has proved elusive, and that because of this many organisations and individuals are able to claim to be working positively towards sustainability in their own spheres of influence. Kates et al though introduce the notion, used throughout this paper, that we can better and more accurately define sustainable development through analysis of the goals, indicators, values and practice of sustainable development throughout the world over the last two or three decades. So far we have touched upon the values and the goals, and we will refer throughout to the practices of sustainable development to continue this section of the review we will now look at the development of tools to measure progress against sustainable development policies and targets. 2.18 Use of indicators.

Development of Indicators A critical technique in developing Sustainable Development Indicators was developed in the late 1980s and came to be known as the Bellagio Principles (Hardi & Zdan, 1997) The Bellagio Principles 1997 (recast as BellagioSTAMP 2009) As the global agenda of focussing upon sustainable development progressed so did the demands for the technical skills required to measure and monitor this progress. Although there are a great many sets of principles for measuring progress towards sustainable development, none are as generic and widely applicable as the Bellagio Principles. Developed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development in 1997, they were intended to not only support the work of the Commission for Sustainable Development but also to provide some degree of agreement and dare it be said standardisation of the process for establishing and using sustainable development indicators (SDIs). It will be apparent that the ability to measure the results of policy and regulatory change or simple procedural change is imperative to ensuring that sustainable development rhetoric was and continues to be - matched

by meaningful progress. The Bellagio Principles were designed to be used by community groups, NGOs, local and national government organisations and businesses alike. The Principles are summarised at Appendix 7. The Bellagio Principles were updated in (2009)

We commenced this paper with reference to the sustainable development indicators used in the UK in 2009. These are indicators which the UK government has developed over a period of years and in consultation with a range of stakeholder groups. We have listed the indicators and have categorised them under the particular pillar of sustainable development to which they are intended to contribute. We have indicated that these can be categorised as specifically concerned with either environmental, social or economic issues, or a combination thereof Environmental 29 (42.6%) Social 24 (35.3%) Economic 3 (4.5%) Social / Environmental 6 (8.8%) Social / Economic 6 (8.8%) Economic / Environmental 0 Of course sustainable development is concerned with creating progress which merges the requirements of all of these aspects and as such each of the indicators will have some degree of impact across all three areas, but we can assert that these headings represent the main, intended thrust for each indicator. The construction of the national indicator set therefore shows the primary concerns of the stakeholders of a community - in the case of our (somewhat arbitrary) choice of the UK we can see that the emphasis is heavily weighted towards the environmental and social spheres economic indicators are only very lightly touched upon. If we compare this to the indicator set from the United Nations Sustainable Development department (total 96 indicators) Environmental 25 (%)

Social 24 (%) Economic 21 (%) Social / Environmental 9 (%) Social / Economic 10 (%) Economic / Environmental 7 United Nations Sustainable Development Indicators 2006 If we compare this to the indicator set for the UK we can see that the United Nations puts far greater emphasis upon the economic development aspect of sustainable development and places this firmly as a policy goal within the sustainable development framework. This reinforces the position that we have postulated, that the introduction of the inter-generational and intra-generational equity commitment of the sustainable development process, inspired by the philosophical premises of the likes of John Rawls, has broadened the scope of the environmental sustainability debate to include a degree of economic aspiration which can create a fundamental tension in sustainable development.

2.19

Social Enterprise

For a number of years observers and academics have asserted that social enterprise lacks a definition upon which everyone can agree. As we have seen sustainable development has faced the same accusation that it is ill-defined, and that this has led to confusion at best and deceit at worst. Morse and Bell (2008) point out that it can be very difficult to summarise something as complex as sustainable development, but at the same time we should be able to define our direction of travel so that we can tell whether we are progressing in the right direction. This principle can in some regards mirror the issue with social enterprise as various people seek to comprehend and categorise it but social enterprise is first and foremost enterprise, and as such is an expression of liberalism and individual liberty. Whereas sustainable development is, at its roots, a scientific and academic approach which informs policy and practice from a position of knowledge, social enterprise is an expression of personal liberty and action, an expression of that dreaded word, capitalism. It may be capitalism with a nice face, or capitalism with a social purpose, but it is still capitalism the use of the same tools and techniques as the capitalist system, but in pursuit of a different set of aims, and driven by a different set of values (Jones, 2008). It is important to make this distinction the cause of increasing environmental pressure in the modern world is the drive to economic growth. It is this drive which supports, ultimately, population growth. And the drive to economic growth is not from the consumers of products but from the suppliers and producers of such products. So the drive to growth comes from enterprise as it seeks to develop new markets for new and old products.

2.20

What does sustainable development mean to social enterprises?

We have seen that sustainable development creates a framework for action which is intended to inform issues like national and regional policy, and the policy and procedures of specific sectors and activities. It lays out a strategy for development and attempts to involve all of the actors in development from individuals through companies and corporations to governments in participating in this strategy. It

creates a methodology for measuring progress against the objectives of this strategy, a methodology which can be applied in any specific circumstances to allow assessment of an organisation's activities with a view to assessing how sustainable they are. This notion of sustainability has been expanded from the straightforwardly environmental notion of sustainability to a more complex notion which recognises and acknowledges the desirability of economic growth but which seeks to ensure that this growth is both less damaging to the environment and the benefits of the growth are more equitably distributed. Where does social enterprise sit in relation to sustainable development as a cultural and political phenomenon? Social enterprise is not, unfortunately, a simply defined phenomenon in its own right. It does not even have something as well used as the Brundtland definition in sustainable development. The closest we have come has been the definition used in the UK governments Social Enterprise Action Plan Scaling New Heights (Unknown, 2006)They are businesses with primarily social or environmental objectives, principally reinvesting surpluses in the business or community. The European research institute, EMES, which was set up to undertake research into social enterprise in Europe, uses the following definition"organisations with an explicit aim to benefit the community, initiated by a group of citizens and in which the material interest of capital investors is subject to limits. They place a high value on their independence and on economic risk-taking related to ongoing socio-economic activity." EMES website - http://www.emes.net/index.php?id=203 date - 16/1109 Defourny and Nyssens (2006), as a result of the PERSE research project which further explored the definition of social enterprise, also make reference to a criteria that the Decision-making power not based on capital ownership (2006) is also included in the EMES definition, though this is not the case on the website at the present moment.

According to Richards and Rotherhoe (Rotheroe & Richards, 2007), the parallels between the philosophies of sustainable development and social enterprise mean that social enterprise has a role in promoting and progressing sustainable development. Social enterprise is distinguished from other businesses simply by the fact that it is trying to do good. But do social enterprise's have additional responsibilities simply by dint of their organisational form, or as a result of their wider commitment to being value-led businesses? To answer this we have to return to our earlier discussions on the ethical basis of sustainable development. We identified two aspects to this one was the justice aspect supplied by Rawls. The other was the systemic or participatory ethic which could be summarised in Leopold. Together we identified that these two traditions provide the ethical principles which underpin sustainable development. What meaningfully do they contribute to our understanding of the ethical basis of social enterprise? We will start by breaking down the definition from EMES above Organisations with an explicit aim to benefit the community, initiated by a group of citizens In this line we see a direct correlation between social enterprise and sustainable development the notion of benefit to the community. This is identified as an explicit aim - in other words, the social business is motivated by an aim which is other than the aim to create or maximise profit. The object of this aim is the community therefore it is fair to assume that a social enterprise will not work to the detriment of the community. What does community mean in this sense? It is the case that mainstream businesses (if there is such a thing) do not work against the interests of their communities either be that their shareholder or their customers. But mainstream businesses may measure their communities interests in solely, or nearly solely, economic terms. Do social enterprises therefore take a more complete approach to their community or stakeholders interests? And should they? Is it the case that social enterprise's therefore have this responsibility to account for their wider impacts, firstly in terms of their explicit aims, and secondly in terms of their extended benefits and impacts on the communities with which they work this would not have to translate into anything other than being able to take account of the impacts

associated with their activities, rather than listing impacts they should have, and attempting to measure them. Does this responsibility to a wider community benefit automatically overlap with the principles of sustainable development or is there simply an implied overlap or as is the case with mainstream businesses, is there only a voluntary responsibility to measure and account for the wider impacts of business activity? In which the material interest of capital investors is subject to limits. This part of the definition relates specifically to the aspect of social enterprise which explicitly sets it apart from mainstream business that it does not exist solely to maximise financial return, though it uses the methods of profit-making organisations. They place a high value on their independence and on economic risk-taking related to ongoing socio-economic activity. This part of the definition reinforces the definition of social enterprise firmly as a type of business activity and one which is rooted in the liberal tradition. In the same way therefore that mainstream business can adopt an essentially voluntary approach to sustainable development, except in so far as sustainable development has shaped specific laws and regulations, so social enterprise also has an essentially voluntary responsibility in terms of sustainable development except in so far as it makes a commitment to trading in pursuit of specific ethical aims. Where these aims are explicitly linked to the sustainable development agenda, then that social enterprise can be said to have a specific obligation to demonstrate the impacts that their actions have in terms of sustainability and sustainable development. Beyond this, social enterprise's in general can be said to have some sort of responsibility to understand and account for their sustainability impacts, a responsibility which goes slightly beyond the optional responsibility which mainstream businesses have insofar as social enterprises have an explicit commitment to the improvement of the community with which they work.

3 3.1

Research methodology Methodology

We will undertake a series of interviews with social enterprise professionals with a view to exploring their perceptions of the significance of sustainable development to their organisations. These interviews, while semi structured, will be conducted to elicit responses and reactions relevant to sustainable development as both ethic and practice. We will be taking an interpretative phenomenological analysis combined with a thematic analysis approach to the analysis of the interviews. These approaches have been chosen for the following reasons. Early indications in this piece of research were that only a very few social enterprises are attempting to measure and report upon their sustainable development impacts in other words sustainable development would appear to have a limited relevance to social enterprises. It is this issue which the research will seek to explore, and as such a phenomenological approach to the analysis of the interviews would appear to be appropriate. A large part of the information to be teased out will relate specifically to the attitudes of the organisations staff to sustainable development and the centrality that they give to the philosophy in how they run their businesses. The central issue to be explored is this sustainable development is a political agenda with a strong moral and ethical core. It depends upon two distinct ethical premises one of these is concerned with environmental sustainability, the other is concerned with a form of social equity, at least as it relates to equality of opportunity. Sustainable development is an attempt to counterbalance the dominant political philosophy of the age, neoliberal and free trade economics, and its variations. While social enterprise is, first and foremost a form of business and as such has one foot firmly in the enterprise camp, one of the defining characteristics of a social enterprise is that it is valuedriven, and is committed to bring about some form of social and \ or environmental change. While it is probably not possible to generalise adequately about the nature of the values which drive social enterprises one of the attractive aspects of the social

enterprise form is the independence and freedom which the form allows to directors and founders,and as such the values of social enterprises can come from a wide variety of different sources - it is rather the fact that they are value-led upon which we will focus, and will explore the attitudes and comprehensions of the decision makers as regards the implications of sustainable development for social enterprises. After the preliminary research work on this project it became apparent that a theorygenerating, exploratory research project was most appropriate. Having examined whether or not we should undertake a larger, more quantitative survey project, or a smaller, more focussed interview based project and having decided upon the latter we then sought to identify which of the qualitative approaches gave us the best opportunities to draw some meaningful conclusions. A single case study of a highly performing project might have been a profitable approach the study by Rotherhoe and Richards (2007) of the FRC's sustainability reports was probably one which examined a very strong method in depth, and at the time it was probably one of the best sets of sustainability reports. Therefore our decision to explore in some depth a small group of companies, and to explore and detail their perceptions of sustainable development. As such an approach which allows us to be mindful of the reflexivity of the researcher, and to try to explicitly integrate and account for this effect, was therefore essential. 3.2 Epistemological rationale

The early exploration of this subject showed that there was an interesting and worthwhile research project which related to the perceptions of social enterprise practitioners with regard to sustainable development. Rather than adopting a wider ranging approach, the emphasis for this topic should therefore be upon beginning a process which can lead to some hypothesis generation or more basically even could provide simply the robust basis for a wider ranging survey approach in the future. Epistemologically therefore we have to construct a framework which recognises the essentially subjective nature of this approach and which places this work in the context of a bigger subject. The approach chosen that of interpretative phenomenological analysis clearly defines this as a smaller scaled, focussed method. Although this method is typically an idiographic approach and this is what

we will apply in terms of our initial and substantive analysis, we will integrate this with a somewhat nomothetic approach to interpreting the results of the individual interviews and the information and impressions that we gather from them. In addition, while this phenomenological approach focusses upon the impressions of the researcher as much (if not more) as the interviewees, we will attempt to maintain a balance between the two so that the impressions of the interviewee regarding the subject matter are well represented. The epistemological basis of the conclusions therefore will be essentially subjective and interpretative but we will use some degree of overall analysis to draw some shared conclusions. It is important, in epistemological terms to make note of the researcher's epistemological position with regard to the research subject. In this case the researcher was concerned to explore and describe the factors which linked the social enterprise model as an organisational construct with the political and philosophical construct that is sustainable development. Therefore the epistemological presuppositions which the researcher brought were primarily to do with the perceived moral equivalence between social enterprise as a business form with a normative aspect to strategy, and sustainable development as a normative approach to strategy and policy making. This researcher epoche therefore would have to be accounted for in the ultimate shape of the interview results. 3.3 The Phenomenological paradigm

Phenomenology is a contemporary approach to analysing primarily sense data - see appendix 8 for some summarised traits in comparison to a Positivist approach. Originally developed by Edmund Husserl, it was a philosophical approach influenced by a disparate school of existentialist philosophers and psychologists in the first half of the twentieth century. Although the discipline has its roots in the likes of Kant and Hegel (Vandenburg 1997), it is in Husserl that the practice is presented as a distinct methodology, and one which can be utilised as a method of primary investigation. The philosophical basis of phenomenology has been summarised by the likes of Groenwald (Groenewald, 2004)- thus - Husserl rejected the belief that objects in the external world exist independently and that the information about objects is reliable. He argued that people can be certain about how things appear in, or present

themselves to, their consciousness. In other words, the analysis of the phenomenon as it presents to the individual's consciousness represents a true phenomenon, which can provide the basis for analysis. In a research setting such as this therefore, the basis for the analytical process is the perception of the phenomenon of sustainable development within the social enterprise form. Also according to Groenwald, citing Giorgi, the operative word in phenomenological research is describe. The research therefore will seek to draw out the descriptions of participants in terms of sustainable development ad its relationship with their business. The phenomenological approach will be applied not only to the analysis of the interview data but also in the conduct of the interviews themselves. The phenomenological approach sits comfortably with the learning style of the researcher - In preparing for this research proposal and previously, in pursuit of a better understanding of the strategic options facing a small social enterprise a series of assessments of learning and working styles of the author were undertaken. From the Learning Styles Inventory it is apparent that the author is fiercely Interpretivist in approach, but with no preference shown for Diverger or Assimilator. This Interpretivist, exploratory approach is well-suited to this proposal, gathering data and information without having a pre-formed idea of what the significance of that data will ultimately be, and interpreting the significance and applicability of that information.

3.4

Thematic analysis and phenomenology

Finally we will use some small degree of either thematic analysis or thematic reflection to tie together the descriptions and impressions of the subject theme and the impressions emerging from the individual interviews.

4 4.1

Research method Objective

The objective of this research is to analyse the factors which inform motivation, policy and practice in social enterprises with regard to reporting upon their sustainable development impacts. The research will also describe the ethical bases for the principles of sustainable development, and compare these with the ethical bases of the social enterprise form to explore whether there are specific imperatives which can be said to act upon the social enterprise form with regard to sustainable development. Finally the research will examine the rationales used in social enterprises for selecting or developing sustainable development indicators for use in their organisation. 4.2 Development of the research

The original proposition of this piece of research was as follows was it possible to devise a tool for social enterprises which would allow them to forecast the likely impacts of their organisation in terms of sustainable development? This came about as a result of a specific request for such a tool from a social enterprise development organisation with a particular interest in environmental business. It quickly became apparent that while comparable forecasting tools did exist, they were primarily linked to planning and policy making organisations for instance the North West Regional Assembly has a tool which is designed to forecast likely impacts of planning decisions (website). To develop a meaningful tool which could be used for forecasting, rather than defining policy direction, it quickly became apparent that a large amount of data on the impacts of specific activities would be needed. While there are growing resources the Social Return on Investment national database being one which will bring together information on (mainly social) impacts, this is an industry in its early days. So the second proposition for this piece of research was this to collect a range of social reports and accounts from social enterprises in the North West of England, and to analyse these to detail either explicit or implicit measurement of sustainable

development impacts, and to examine the motivation for the selection of indicators. Then, having undertaken some quantitative analysis of the accounts as returned, to establish a focus group to undertake qualitative analysis of the relevance and influence of sustainable development upon the organisations. However, the following issues arose Using membership of various networks in the North West of England director of SELNET (until August 2009 - Lancashire social enterprise network), director of TogetherWorks (Manchester social enterprise network) and SENW (North West social enterprise strategic network), a call for social and environmental accounts was issued. This call was cascaded throughout the networks to a total of 460 member organisations. This call for examples of social and environmental accounts was also featured in the greater Manchester social enterprise magazine Enterprising but in total resulted in only two respondents (Unlimited Potential and the Social Audit Network). Direct calls were made to a range of large social enterprises to identify whether or not they produced social and / or environmental accounts, or sustainability reports. Very few produced any of these, preferring instead to report upon impacts through their annual reports and usually in a narrative form based upon management information. Of those that did, the Furniture Resource Centre in Liverpool produced award-winning sustainability reports, the Ecology Building Society produced three pillar reports (but were based in Yorkshire, and the North West had been selected as the geographical focus for the research) and the Social Audit Network (SAN) supplied comprehensive information on organisations around the North West which were using a social audit method. Part of the original intent of the research was to find different methods of accounting and reporting and to bring some degree of comparison so though the SAN had supplied information on organisations which had used social audit methods in the past few years, it was decided that to simply focus upon organisations which were using social audit method would make the research more about that methodology and less about sustainable development. This would require a fundamental rethink of the research objectives. Apart from these results it became apparent that a surprisingly small number of organisations did actually produce social or environmental accounts, so a retrenchment was undertaken.

Therefore the terms of the research project changed so that the emphasis was no longer upon how social enterprise account for sustainable development, but rather upon what the obstacles were for sustainable development reporting and what the motivations were from a selection of organisations to undertake reporting or accounting on their sustainability impacts.

Rather than continuing to gather quantitative data on social or environmental accounting in the North West it was decided to undertake some qualitative research with a group of social enterprises which had some sort of commitment to either sustainable development or environmental sustainability either in their organisational mission or in their operational prctice. This criteria would obviously open up the field of potential organisations quite considerably so a second decision was taken to reduce the geographical scope of the project to social enterprises working within the Greater Manchester area. The objective of this research became - to analyse the perceptions which inform policy and practice in social enterprises with regard to understanding their sustainable development impacts. There were a series of sub-objectives associated with this. These were as follows To identify the perceived links between sustainable development as mission and the practice of sustainable development reporting To identify any perceived ethical links between sustainable development as a political agenda and social enterprise as a business form To explore different methods of managing and measuring sustainable development in the context of social enterprise To analyse the development of indicators and how these were identified (particularly with regard to the perception of the organisation as both stakeholder and as stakeholder hub)

4.3

Research Design

The research population

One of the reasons that the Greater Manchester sub-region was chosen was because the researcher is a director of the Greater Manchester social enterprise network, and as such an action research approach could be integrated with the design of the project. This means that a possible future outcome of the research will be a structured approach to reporting upon sustainable development within the social enterprise sector in Greater Manchester, and possibly the development of a framework for social enterprises in the area to better understand or measure their sustainability impacts. In addition, strong knowledge of the local social enterprises who make up the membership of the network allowed for a considered approach to be taken to selecting a sample of organisations which would give the best spread of perspectives and experience. A process of purposive sampling (Welman and Kruger (1999) was undertaken, the criteria are listed in Appendix 9.

The size of the group to be interviewed was informed by Boyd (2001, cited in Groenewald) who identified a sample size for a phenomenological study of between two and ten as sufficient to reach saturation. A sample size of six organisations fell mid-range, and was considered adequate. 1. Deep Green Care Community CIC. Age <1 year, size two employees, sector health, mission explicit commitment to sustainable development, organisational form CIC 2. Groundwork Lancashire West and Wigan. Age >10 years, size >200 employees, mission environmental and sustainable development charity and social enterprise. 3. Manchester Environmental Resource Centre initiative (MERCi) Age >5 years, size>5 employees, mission environmental and sustainable development, 4. Open Space Cooperative, active membership twenty plus 5. Recycle IT! - >3 years, 3 employees, sector environmental, mission environmental and social. 6. Unlimited Potential age > 3 (transitioned) employees >5, sector health mission primarily community health including social development

4.4

Data gathering

It was decided that a semi-structured interview approach was most likely to yield the information that the researcher was seeking, and was most consistent with the phenomenological approach taken. There are many relevant advantages to the semistructured interview particularly in a case like this where the research may inform future interventions in this case moving towards a simple sustainable development reporting or management tool which is linked to relevant local factors. 4.5 Interview questions -

An interview was devised (appendix 10). The questions were designed to elicit information and data on the significance and influence of the sustainable development politic upon the operations of social enterprises. The questions were grouped under the following section headings 1. Sustainable Development and your organisational mission 2. Sustainable Development in Policy and Procedure 3. Managing Performance on Sustainable Development Impacts 4. Measurement 5. Reporting Accounting Performance Management 6. Contexts and references The questions were designed under each heading to allow exploration of the critical thinking and dynamic relationships in which the principles of sustainable development were utilised each business. There was flexibility within each interview to explore particular areas in depth, with a view to teasing out those issues which were considered to be central or critical to the organisation in is relationship to or integration of the principles of sustainable development. The interview was designed using input from Kvale (1996) for different question types Introducing questions:

 Follow-up questions: Probing questions: Specifying questions: Direct questions: Indirect questions: Structuring questions: Silence: Interpreting questions: - to give the best chances of elucidating the most relevant information for the analysis phase. The interviews were conducted in one to one sessions and were recorded for clarity. An ethical and conduct statement regarding the interviews was developed and is at appendix 11 4.6 Timetable

The six interviews were completed during the month of November 2009, as was the analysis. 4.7 Analytical Framework

A phenomenological analysis of perceptions of sustainable development among a purposively sampled group of Manchester social enterprises. 4.8 Analysis parameters -

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with six social enterprise managers or directors. The interviews were transcribed verbatim. The interviews were designed to elicit perceptions, attitudes and the professional lived experience of social enterprise workers with regard to sustainable development as a political philosophy and an ethical system or systems, and to also draw out information on the perceived and actual relevance of sustainable development to people who work within and are

committed to the social enterprise model. The analytical approach used is based upon the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis method detailed in the Methodology section of this paper. The interviews were randomly numbered 1 6. Each interview was analysed in two ways consistent with a phenomenological method first, an idiographic approach was taken and each case was examined so that researcher impressions were listed with regard to each interview, with focus upon the impressions that the researcher gathered regarding the place and meaning of sustainable development within each business. Within the individual interviews emerging themes were identified and these were then further analysed in a meta analysis wherein a tagging system was used to identify concepts and perceptions of significance and to tie these together in a series of conclusions. These conclusions are intended primarily to inform future research into the significance of sustainable development (as distinct from environmental sustainability) to social enterprises. 5.1 Individual cases summaries and phenomenological analyses

In each case analysis was undertaken using the themed headings of the interview. The interviews as discussed in the method section were constructed to elicit impressions and perceptions of professional lived experience with regard to sustainable development and its importance or significance for the organisation. Here we start with summary impressions of each interview including researchers impression and identification of themes The interview summaries can be read at Appendix 12 Case 1 National organisation, large numbers of staff, long established, high turnover Phenomenological analysis The emphasis within this organisation is upon completeness - and the principles of sustainable development are included in each aspect of the organisation in such a way as to ensure that the systems themselves continue to protect and promote these

principles. In this systemisation of the principles, and the creation of processes and mechanisms of validation, the organisation can ensure that there is not an ad-hoc approach to promoting and progressing the principles of sustainable development. The perception of the organisation is that the principles of sustainability ie, the environmental aspects of their strategy and operations are easier to both manage and measure this is undoubtedly true of many of the organisations who attempt to best take responsibility for their sustainable development impacts but the social aspect is not neglected and the stakeholder engagement approach reflects this. However, it is not so clear what represents progress in terms of the social aspects of sustainable development, beyond simple inclusion. This organisation considered sustainable development to be a moral imperative.

Case 2 Very small organisation, long established but been through various owners, now a workers cooperative, small turnover, few staff Phenomenological analysis As a small organisation the commitment within this business to sustainable development is inherent in the values held by the individuals. As such a personal, reactive take on sustainable development is their natural stance but sustainable development becomes a peripheral activity when it is not investor-driven. The ability to deliver sustainable development is dependent therefore upon the people and their take upon it. sustainable development is perceived to be a moral imperative for the company but only as this relates to competitive advantage. Sustainable development is understood primarily as it relates to economic sustainability though there is some degree of systemisation of measurement of environmental impacts. There are as yet no mechanisms for measuring social impacts though the company does in fact make some quite substantial social effects.

Case 3 Brand new organisation, two directors, seeking premises having secured investment, local / regional reach

Phenomenological analysis The organisation's commitment to sustainability is unchallenged by the realities of implementation but the early activities show a practical commitment. What is interesting in a business at this stage in its life cycle is that one of the challenges is the ability of the founder to maintain focus on business objectives whilst constructing an organisation which reflects a set of quite specific values many of which overlap with sustainable development, without compromise. The construction of the systems which will integrate these values, while maintaining entrepreneurial drive and focus, is a microcosm of the freedom versus equality, and by extension the short term profit versus long-term responsibility debates which hang over the sustainable development agenda. The organisation perceives sustainable development to be a moral imperative and an operational compromise. Even at this very early stage considerable systemisation of health and environmental impact measurement is being implemented, though with less emphasis upon the wider social and economic effects. The emphasis within this business is very much upon environmental sustainability.

Case 4 Medium sized social enterprise with an emphasis upon local community wellbeing, medium turnover, well established. Phenomenological analysis Again this is an organisation which demonstrates completeness between the adoption of certain principles many of which are to do with community autonomy and decision making and the policies, procedures and performance measurement necessary to have a meaningful attempt at implementing sustainable development. This completeness has come about as a result of systemisation of the necessary procedures and policies which can reflect a commitment (in this case resulting form a perceived moral imperative) to sustainable development. This completeness is methodical and detailed throughout the organisation, and results in highly formalised procedures to ensure that sustainable development does not become peripheral.

Case 5 Workers cooperative and social enterprise, recently established but robust and experiencing rapid growth Phenomenological analysis One of the issues which leaped out here was that sustainable development was not a term which was considered helpful there were overlaps with the philosophy, but there were also reservations about its usefulness primarily because it seemed to be a compromise in many ways, and also because it seemed too broad and inclusive to be meaningful. It lacked a moral imperative, which was found instead in other political ideologies. Again, this was an organisation which shied away from systemisation of measurement of impacts and was instead constructed to have ongoing mechanisms for resolving issues as they arose, and continuing development through avoiding bureaucracy. Case 6 Well established organisation, regional reach, multiple projects Phenomenological analysis Once again there were reservations about sustainable development as a desirable philosophy although much of what this project did, in terms of overall business aims and direction, had considerable overlap with the political principles of sustainable development, and this was reflected in the procedures of the organisation, the emphasis was much more upon demonstration of environmental sustainability than allowing compromises in pursuit of development. Here again sustainable development was seen as potentially problematic rather than helpful position for the organisation to work from, though there was a far deeper understanding of the interrelationships which sustainable development engendered. Though sustainable development was very close to the core business objectives there remained reservations about it it seems that the more that is known about what sustainable development is, and what it's supposed to achieve, the greater the sceptical doubt. 5.2 Thematic phenomenological analysis

The interviews were semi-structured and designed to elicit perceptions from social enterprise professionals of sustainable development and what it meant to their organisations. The interviews were designed to explore not only the overt declarations regarding the significance of sustainable development but also the operational mechanisms which had been implemented to reflect this and any disconnects, inconsistencies or paradoxes which had come about. A series of themes emerged from these interviews and the subsequent analysis. These were Compromise Systemisation Moral Imperative Environmental Sustainability Periphery / peripheral Investors Ill-defined The themes reflect layers of professional and personal meanings and connections between and within social enterprises with regard to the application or integration of sustainable development. These layers of meaning indicate that as would be expected experience is not uniform. But not only this, it indicates that there are conflicting experiences of sustainable development. Their experience within the organisations can be defined thus Compromise sustainable development is seen as both a compromise in its own right (cases 3,5,6) and as requiring compromise within the business, as it seeks to increase the procedural factors which influence a businesses critical success factors. A challenge for social enterprise managers and directors as for other business managers can be summarised as balancing their core business objectives with their wider societal or environmental obligations. Obviously, their perceptions of these obligations is crucial are they integrated into their business systems from top (mission) to bottom (procedures) (ie, systemised): or are they peripheral considerations to the business objectives and therefore an additional factor which requires consideration but whose benefits are not clearly understood for the organisation (case 2).

Systemisation the business is best able to integrate the principles of sustainable development or of sustainability when these are systemised made part of the performance management culture of the business. These principles have to therefore be clear and not ill-defined a problem which affects sustainable development as a philosophy rather than environmental sustainability as a technical and scientific discipline (cases 1,3,4,5,6). It might be the case that because social and socioeconomic imperatives of sustainable development are harder to measure and quantify and harder to integrate into management systems this should not mean that they are allowed to become peripheral. However, it does seem to be the case that organisations have more trouble keeping social imperatives away from the periphery, rather than environmental ones. Social imperatives would also seem to be more difficult to systemise (although stakeholder theory and practice would provide a good basis) but more importantly, difficult to sustain. Moral imperative the moral imperatives of environmental sustainability is better understood and more readily adopted than the broader principles of sustainable development (cases 3,5,6). These are more open to interpretation and while the aspects which are to do with inclusion can be more easily adopted and are sometimes consistent with the overall business objectives (case 4), the principles which relate to equality are less easily understood and less easily integrated without, again, compromise of the business objectives. The aspect of stakeholder engagement however can be successfully integrated with business objectives and often does form a core part of the sustainable development processing in both the organisations and the perceptions of the organisations held by participants (cases 1,4,6 and in a more straightforwardly democratic way, 5) Environmental sustainability - is the part of sustainable development which organisations most readily integrate and which they most straightforwardly understand. Two organisations quite explicitly question the usefulness of the concepts of sustainable development, identifying that some woolier, ill-defined aims are being included in the sustainable development political philosophy which detract from the relative clarity of environmental sustainability and the economic causes of environmental unsustainability.

Periphery / peripheral critical to the influence or significance of sustainable development for social enterprise organisations is whether or not the principles are intended to be systemised in one way or another, or whether they are a peripheral, additional cost to the business. This in turn depends upon how far the business objectives or the businesses' value-led objectives can accommodate and integrate the aims of sustainability and of sustainable development. The less the aims can be integrated, the more on the periphery of the business's focus the principles of sustainable development will be. As indicated elsewhere this might be a quite conscious decision, as sustainable development might be quite distinct form the business values. This links to Investors - and the influence that these have upon organisations interviewed for good or ill. Only one of the interviewees had had their approach to sustainable development changed as a direct result of investment, and had participated in a regional scheme to improve their environmental performance. This same organisation had also adopted an ethical investment policy which meant that investments would not necessarily be taken on unless there was sufficient alignment with the business's values. The other implicit issue with investors was directly linked to the amounts of earned income which the business could accrue for some of the organisations it was the case that their income streams were simply old-style grants, repackaged into service level agreements. This relationship (probably worth a research project on its own!) is one which greatly refracts the earned income claims of a social enterprise, and will have impacts in terms of the demands of funders, and the operational priorities which are followed. Final theme is ill-defined. This relates primarily to the often repeated perception that sustainable development was difficult to understand, and as such some organisations would simply take what they liked and leave the rest. In spite of the many different frameworks for promoting and progressing sustainable development, organisations would tend to see themselves as having stakeholders (and would engage with them in a variety of ways) but would be less likely to see themselves as the stakeholders of others for instance communities, communities of interest, towns, cities, regions, countries etc.

Conclusions as a result of

The focus and approach to this research was greatly changed

undertaking the research! What started out as a topic with a wide-ranging and grandiose scope, coupled with an ambitious set of issues to be resolved has become something with a much narrower scope and a much less ambitious target and it means perhaps that we can make some small but meaningful contribution to a wider debate that of the relationship between social enterprise and sustainable development. It would seem apparent that there should be some sort of relationship between the political philosophy (sustainable development) and the organisational form (social enterprise). After all, sustainable development is probably the most widespread secular system of ethical principles in the world at the moment, and this is bound to have some sort of impact upon the social enterprise form as a type of value-led organisation. However, we can draw out at least three suggested conclusions about this relationship.

1. Social enterprises are organisations of a particular form enterprises or businesses and many of the attributes of business are relevant to this debate one is autonomy an individual or a small group of individuals will have quite specific ideas about their market, and about the values that drive their desired market intervention. The mechanism which will regulate the success or otherwise of their intervention is market success, rather than any appeal to outside powers. Understanding their market is of greater relevance to their effectiveness than integrating a complete sustainable development package. 2. A second is that sustainable development is an ostensibly complete package of secular ethics, but in actuality social businesses can and do - cherrypick the values of sustainable development which are of most relevance, are most

applicable and most deliverable. While the principles of sustainable development can inform values, and should inform practice, organisations will often tend to use the parts of the process which reinforce their core business objectives reinforcing point 1 above. 3. Finally, the ethics of environmental sustainability seem to be more controllable, more meaningful and more desirable to many social enterprises than the ethics of social and economic development. The ethics of sustainability have a pull effect encouraging organisations to work to have less environmental impact, and deliverable in a way which can be more obviously in harness with business objectives. The ethics of social and economic development have an overall push effect forcing social enterprises to integrate social inclusion systems which don't necessarily or obviously work in the same direction as their business objectives but which may be consistent with their individual ethics, or the values which ostensibly drive their organisation. These pull factors set quantifiable targets which can challenge the company; the push factors of social inclusion and equality rather define the method and practice of the organisation, are less suitable to targets and can create a layer of activity which is not necessarily consistent with the business objectives though it might be perfectly consistent with the business values. 6.2 Specific conclusions arising from the phenomenological approach

Although the interview group was small, some quite specific themes emerged from our analysis. First, although it might be imagined that there would be a quite substantial overlap between the ethics of the two forms social enterprise and sustainable development in fact there was a much greater amount of fluidity and ambiguity between them. The normative ethics of the businesses themselves, as might be expected, were often rooted in the ethical positions of the individuals who had founded and who continued to run the businesses. The social enterprise form offered an opportunity to integrate certain ethical positions in the business structure from root to branch even in those organisations where the commitment of the organisations overall was explicitly about sustainable development, there was still a great deal of

flexibility in selecting which aspects of sustainable development were used. If Sustainable Development has a set of normative premises, and sustainable development itself is achieved as a result of these premises social, economic and environmental being achieved in some degree of mutual tension, then this was sometimes overlooked in terms of social businesses identifying directly relevant premises (and associated policies and measures). Second, environmental sustainability was (generally) perceived to be of greater significance to the organisations as a moral imperative, than the social aspect of sustainable development. This relates to a few aspects of the sustainable development process firstly the premises of sustainable development which relate to economic development while avoiding the externalisation of environmental costs sit very comfortably with the social enterprise form. An ethical or value-led business is more explicit in its commitment to first, do no harm. Secondly, the environmental impacts of a business and the measurement, management and improvement of these are much more amenable to not only a management approach, but to ultimately passive systemisation so that their improvement can be in many regards, automated. These impacts can more easily be harnessed to the business objectives. The social requirements of inclusion and equality, while amenable in some regard to systemisation, are also in some ways the very antithesis of systemisation gathering information, input and perceptions from people is an active process. In some instance environmental sustainability gained additional momentum within organisations because it is less morally ambiguous. The interviewees understood that sustainable development was inherently a compromise some of the interviewees quite plainly had an ideological opposition to any form of economic development which either failed to give primacy to the environment, or allowed for a continuing inequity in both the profits of development, and the mechanisms of the development itself. Although, as we have identified, many of the development philosophies of the last few decades have been tried and have failed to achieve their desired outcomes, there is no doubt that the current neo-liberal economic system is the cause of much inequity. Therefore, if sustainable development is perceived to be full of loopholes which allow for the continued maintenance of these inequities, then there will be less commitment to the social and economic aspects.

Finally, environmental sustainability is perceived as the context in which the social and economic activities are undertaken. This approach which reflects the Russian Doll model (pp.20) is consistent with the more contemporary concern that the environmental agenda should not be peripheral to any others but must instead be understood as fundamental to any other agendas. The mechanisms for social inclusion inherent in the sustainable development model have variously influenced the social businesses which were interviewed however and it is important not to leave the impression that the social aspects were considered to be irrelevant. Four of the organisations used a variety of different mechanisms to ensure that their businesses were in some way democratic, and for two at least this meant really quite wide-ranging efforts to ensure that their critical stakeholders had formalised constituted methods for comprehensive participation (in other words, input to strategic decision making right through to complete performance management information) and others had less formal but organic participative methods which required more ongoing effort to maintain, but delivered greater flexibility in terms of stakeholder input. What is less clear however is how far sustainable development has influenced these mechanisms, and how much they have been formed by issues like the cooperative history of the organisations and the culture of cooperation in the Manchester social enterprise sector more generally. 6.3 Sustainable development and other indicator sets

We can also draw some general conclusions about the relationships between wider indicators sets and individual social enterprises. For some, the wider adoption of sustainable development as an organisational aim is sufficient. There is very little consistency as to what this can then mean to the organisation. For some organisations it implies wider imperatives about how they conduct each aspect of their business for others, their own business objectives (as a social enterprise) are sufficient expressions of their commitment to sustainable development (and this is not to suggest that that might not be the case). However the social enterprise organisations in the survey group commit to measuring their activities, only a very few are able to

relate their results and impacts back to another framework for measuring sustainable development for instance, national indicator sets or local sustainability strategies.

Reflections

This has been a challenging process. The final research project was very, very different from the original research topic. The original research project was intended to be an action learning project which would document the process of developing a forecasting tool for social enterprises which could help to project likely sustainable development impacts of a new social enterprise. This original topic required a great deal of research into two distinct areas of business activities one being the use of sustainable development indicators in social enterprises; - the other being the use of forecasting tools generally and how these overlapped with other types of management tools. As a result of this initial topic research some general conditions became apparent one was that to be able to meaningfully extrapolate or forecast future sustainability impacts in the social enterprise sector, we would need some robust data on sustainable development impacts already measured. The second was that, while there were forecasting tools with some degree of comparability for instance, various regional and national organisations concerned with planning policy have developed forecasting tools which can return likely impacts of policy in terms of sustainable development; and obviously there are many forecasting tools used which can very accurately forecast all aspects of financial impacts for an organisation - these partially transferable precedents could only be reconfigured if there were sufficient data from previous impact measurements to allow an accurate benchmark for forecasting to be constructed and in the social enterprise sector this did not seem to be the case. So the focus of the research moved to examining how social enterprises were currently accounting for their sustainable development impacts. As indicated in the section on methods above, the attempts to find social enterprises which were, in some way, measuring and accounting for their sustainable development impacts and to conduct some research into this, proved a challenge, Whilst there was as might be expected a wide range of approaches to both the performance management issue in social enterprises, and to the reporting thereof, and to the discipline of social accounting, these were processes which were patchily used and were still very much in the shadow of the company narrative, the preferred method of the third sector in reporting upon impacts. Further, while there might be an

ostensible commitment to sustainable development, this may or may not have a commensurate impact upon the policy and procedure within the organisation. This may be for a variety of reasons. Some of these may be to do with a narrower focus upon the positive impacts that the organisation has only some might be to do with a wider confusion about what a commitment to sustainable development actually means in practice. Or it may be that a perception that being able to measure and manage both narrow and broader sustainable development impacts was a resource hungry activity in itself and would, if undertaken sincerely, lead to other resource hungry activities. In any case, the level of connection or completeness within the organisation with regard to sustainable development would exhibit the actual degree of disconnect which existed, and this disconnect could be at least somewhat clarified by use of the phenomenological approach. Exploring these issues using a phenomenological perspective, attempting to make contribution to an understanding of what sustainable development means to social enterprise professionals, examining the degree of functional disconnect - was an amorphous and indistinct set of issues, until reading Smith's exposition on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The application of this method in business studies is a recent development and it is hoped that this paper will be one example of the application of a phenomenological approach when a set of business related issues are being explored with a view to hypothesis generation.

7.2

Personal reflections on learning -

In preparing for this research proposal and previously, in pursuit of a better understanding of the strategic options facing a small social enterprise a series of assessments of learning and working styles of the author were undertaken. From the Learning Styles Inventory referred to earlier it is apparent that the author is Interpretivist and this attitude lends itself to a less rigid, qualitative approach to examining issues such as this. The favouring of less formal, less structured approach to data gathering, and the prioritisation of the phenomena as experienced by central actors, means that the phenomenological approach was ideal for the author. As such

this proposal reflects an inductive approach, but also one which is consistent with the interpretative phenomological analysis method. (Smith, 2002) The breakthrough in terms of understanding what the research process should be about was when the author accepted that only contribution to the debate would have to be made. Rather than having to try and find a way of resolving the issue of the relationship between sustainable development as a political philosophy, and social enterprise as a business form, the author resolved that being able to make some contribution to progress this study would be a good enough outcome from the research. This realisation was compounded by the already identified learning style of the author, the very plainly Interpretivist, and once the decision had been made then the phenomenological approach seemed to be a natural fit. Identifying the potential use of phenomenological techniques as a qualitative research method was also a significant part of the learning process. Having struggled to try and identify factors and practices which could help to clarify the interrelationship between the sustainable development philosophy and the social enterprise business model, and having a sense that at each level of analysis there seemed to be unanswered questions at the level below, the phenomenological approach eventually made perfect sense particularly when we take the starting point as Husserl's famous exposition - back to the thing itself. In other words start with the direct experience of the thing to be examined. Although the specific technique used IPA doesn't have a history of use in this area of management, the more that the author examined it the more appropriate it seemed in terms of allowing an examination of not simply the attitudes towards sustainable development, or the technical knowledge of it, but rather the perception of its ethical and procedural significance, and whether or not there was disconnect between the perception and the practice unfolding from that perception. As an aside a straightforward reflection on the implementation of the research would be that we should not have included a large national organisation in the interview group there was too much separation between the experience of the director who was interviewed and the place of sustainable development within the organisation so although we gained a useful exposition of the place of sustainable development, the actual direct experience of the director was insufficient (in terms of the history of the relationship between sustainable development and social enterprise, and the practical implications

of this for the organisation), and the responsibility for progressing sustainable development was too diffuse given the size of the organisation - to give a proper basis for phenomenological rather than a simply technical analysis. However the input was useful in so far as it gave a stronger example of the level of connection which can be achieved where resources are less of an issue. 7.3 Achievement of research objectives

The focus of this piece of work has always been to better understand what sustainable development means to social enterprise. There can always be the challenge made that a straightforward survey of social enterprise's with a well designed questionnaire may have given wide ranging information on the subject but it may not be a coincidence that we had trouble gaining information on such practices from social enteprises. However, the issue which the author was most interested in was the degree of disconnect between the various aspects of the business and how far or how much the principles of sustainable development were integrated. While the approach taken has yielded some interesting insights, and the approach was coherent, the structuring of the interviews could have been better developed so that greater understanding of the perceptions of the interviewees could have been gained. If the research were being undertaken again, greater emphasis would have been put upon the deeper aspect of lived experience of sustainable development within the social enterprise context

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O'Riordan, T. (1997). Indicators for Sustainable Development. In Proceedings of the European Commission (Environment and Climate Programme) Advanced Study Course 5th - 12th. Delft. Peet, R. (1999). Theories of Development. New York: Guildford Press. Petith, H. (1999). Georgescu-Roegen versus Solow/Stiglitz and the Convergence to the Cobb-Douglas. In Distribution (pp. 1-25). Rotheroe, N., & Richards, A. (2007). Social Return on Investment and social enterprise: Transparent accountability for sustainable development. Social Enterprise Journal, 3(1), 31 - 48. Treanor, P. (1997). Why sustainability is wrong. Unknown. (1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development - "Our Common Future." Unknown. (2006). Social enterprise action plan Scaling new heights. Office. Williams, J. B., & Mcneill, J. M. (2005). The Current Crisis in NeoClassical Economics and the Case for an Economic Analysis based upon Sustainable Development. In Philosophy (pp. 0-17). Oxford. {Document Not In Library} (2002). Sectoral sustainable development strategies: self assessment guide 01.05.02. Group. Sustainable Development Commission. (2009). Bellagio STAMP. (2009). Sustainable development indicators in your pocket 2009. Djalali, F. A., & Vollaard, P. (2008). The Complex History of Sustainability. Du Pisani, J. (2006). Sustainable development historical roots of the concept. Environmental Sciences, 3(2), 83-96. doi: 10.1080/15693430600688831. Goodpaster, K. (1979). From Egoism to Environmentalism. In K. Goodpaster & K. Sayre, Ethics & the 21st Century. University of Notre Dame Press. Gordon, H. (1954). The Economic Theory Of A Common Property Resource: The Fishery. Journal Of Political Economy, vol 62, pp 124 142. Groenewald, T. (2004). A Phenomenological Research Design Illustrated. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(1), 42-55. Hardi, P., & Zdan, T. (1997). Principles in Practice. Winnipeg. Hardin, G. (2001). Carrying Capacity As an Ethical Concept, The Social Contract,. Harris, J. M. (2000). Basic Principles of Sustainable Development. Life Support Systems (pp. 0-25).

Jevons, W. (1866). The Coal Question An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines. Jones, C. (2008). The Social Enterprise Coalitions response to the Green Paper, A Stronger Society - Voluntary Action in the 21st Century. Society. Kidd, C. (1992). The evolution of sustainability. journal of agriculture and environmental ethics, 5(1), 1-26. Kristensen, E. S., & ALroe, H. F. (2001). Towards a Systemic Ethic In search of an Ethical Basis for Sustainability and Precaution. Ecologist, The (pp. 1-27). Leiserowitz, A. A., Kates, R. W., & Parris, T. M. (2005). Do global Attituude and Behaviours Support Sustainable Development? Environment, 47(9), 22-38. Retrieved from http://www.heldref.org/env.php. Leopold, B. A. (1948). The Land Ethic. In A Sand County Almanac. Norgaard, R. (1994). Development Betrayed The end of progress and a coevolutionary revisioning of the future. New York and London: Routledge. O'Riordan, T. (1997). Indicators for Sustainable Development. In Proceedings of the European Commission (Environment and Climate Programme) Advanced Study Course 5th - 12th. Delft. Peet, R. (1999). Theories of Development. New York: Guildford Press. Petith, H. (1999). Georgescu-Roegen versus Solow/Stiglitz and the Convergence to the Cobb-Douglas. In Distribution (pp. 1-25). Rotheroe, N., & Richards, A. (2007). Social Return on Investment and social enterprise: Transparent accountability for sustainable development. Social Enterprise Journal, 3(1), 31 - 48. Treanor, P. (1997). Why sustainability is wrong. Unknown. (1987). Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development - "Our Common Future." Unknown. (2006). Social enterprise action plan Scaling new heights. Office. Williams, J. B., & Mcneill, J. M. (2005). The Current Crisis in NeoClassical Economics and the Case for an Economic Analysis based upon Sustainable Development. In Philosophy (pp. 0-17). Oxford. {Document Not In Library}