Project 2: A contemporary analysis of social
enterprise as a public health intervention
Conceptualising causal pathways to health
through the work of social enterprises
Bobby Macaulay
Yunus Centre of Social Business and Health
Project 2 at a glance…
• Causal Pathways to Health
– Analysis of social value reports
– In process of compiling and writing-up results
• Social Enterprise and Health Assets
– Conceptualising theoretical overlaps
– Arranging final interview before compiling results
• Case Studies
– Examining the views of different stakeholders towards a
social enterprise
– Case Study 1 completed, Case Studies 2 and 3 underway
Causal Pathways to Health
• Aim
– To investigate potential causal pathways to health
through the work of social enterprises
• Objectives
– Gather data on the processes undertaken by social
enterprises and what impacts they have
– Consider findings in relation to health literature
• Methods
– Content analysis of evaluative reports (SAA +SROI)
Sampling
SAA
Population of qualifying
reports
104 online + 4 not
online
SROI
108 59 online
59
Duplicates and
41 reports rejected
organisations outside UK
67 15 reports rejected
44
Organisations outside
Scotland
46 reports rejected
21 31 reports rejected
13
Organisations not
meeting SENSCOT
definition
12 reports rejected
9 5 report rejected
8
9
8
Sample to analyse
Sample
• Primary Focus
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Access to employment: 6
Housing: 5
Local economic development: 4
Access to financial services: 2
• Location
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Glasgow and surrounding area: 5
Aberdeenshire: 4
Edinburgh and surrounding area: 3
Ayrshire: 2
Fife: 2
Scotland-wide: 1
• Reports published between 2004 and 2014
Identifying Processes
• The first element of the content analysis was to
identify what each social enterprise actually does
– Activities
– Spaces provided
– Interaction with different groups
• ACTIVITY 1- Identifying processes
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Read through the page yourself
Highlight each distinct process or activity you find
Come together with the rest of your table
Write each one on a post-it note and stick on flip-chart
Processes
• Around 200 distinct processes were identified
• To make sense of them, they were grouped
inductively into the following…
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–
–
–
–
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Community engagement
Education and skills development
Facilitate social interaction
Internal institutional activities and policies
Provide or facilitate employment
Provision of a positive space or environment
Provision of services
Outcomes
• Anything that the social enterprise claimed to
make/produce/change through its work
• Outcomes were coded verbatim
• Then grouped into ‘levels’ and ‘types’ of impact
Social
Individual
Community
Systems/Society
Economic
Cultural
Environmental
Causal Pathways
• The causal connection between a particular
process and a particular outcome (Disclaimer)
• ACTIVITY 2- Identifying causal pathways
– Examine whether the previously highlighted
processes are causally linked to an outcome
– Write each outcome on a post-it note
– Draw a line between process and related outcome
Results
• What you come out with are a number of
different processes that result in a number
of different outcomes
– Some processes are ‘lonely’, as are some
outcomes
– This research is only concerned with causal
pathways
– 330 specific causal claims
Processes
Community engagement
Education and skills
development
Facilitate social
interaction
Internal institutional
activities and policies
Provide or facilitate
employment
Provision of a positive
space or environment
Provision of services
Outcomes
Social
Individual
Community
Systems/Society
Economic
Individual
Community
Systems/Society
Cultural
Individual
Community
Systems/Society
Environmental
Individual
Community
Systems/Society
Next steps
• Write publishable paper(s)
– Entire project
• Consider in relation to health literature
– Analyse impacts of a single process or outcome
• Employment?
– Compare and contrast to Case Study results
• Anything systematically different between the two
sets of results?