Exploring the social enterprise: Factors important to sustainability

The theoretical underpinning of social enterprise management remains limited, particularly in terms of the nature of the important relationships that are critical to their sustained success. This study incorporates Social Capital Theory as the principal lens to examine how the networks of social enterprise managers influence the sustainability of these ventures. The research for this thesis used a concurrent, convergent mixed methods approach on a sample of 93 social enterprise leaders using surveys and face-to-face interviews. The participants were sourced from a cross-section of social enterprise organisational types from urban and regional locations in Australia and Scotland, allowing for a cross-country comparative analysis.Submitted in the fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2014