Posted by cooperatoby in Uncategorized.
Tags: Yorkshire
I’ve just discovered a strange coincidence. In 1859, my great great grandfather James Casmey wrote a poem, A Voice From Hackfall, in praise of the 18th-century landscape gardens at Hackfall Woods near Grewelthorpe, just south of Masham, North Yorkshire. That same wood fought off stiff competition to be awarded a grand prix in the EU Cultural Heritage Prize for conservation in 2011.
James Casmey was born in 1813 in Goa, and died on 24th December 1886 in Brighouse. He was a nailmaker, and, ironically, also an active teetotaller and co-founder of a temperance society in Staincross, just north of Barnsley. The rather rare name Casmey is still being passed down among my Rands cousins, and my brother Najm-ud-Din (to whom thanks for the genealogical research) uses it as an internet handle.
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Posted by cooperatoby in cooperative, social economy, Uncategorized.
Tags: social enterprise, social franchising, social media
Paul Mason in his Guardian video says that the Capitalist Realism of the Neocons – the belief that while we studied reality they were remaking it – has come crashing to a halt. A generation has had the future they predicted cancelled just like that, and some have adopted very radical beliefs: from Lib Dem to Black Block anarchist. Many of them don’t read ‘old stuff’, but rely on social media, which are consistently 14 hours ahead of the mainstream. In the 20th century telephone companies extracted value from the network effect; what today’s protesters are doing is extracting another kind of value, which is non-monetary. Social media give you a free hit of momentum – and of ‘dis-momentum’ – protesters know when to swarm and when to break off. Sociologists have thought this mercurial nature of the social media generation is a weakness, but it can be a strength.
There seems to be a link with the flocking behaviour of birds like starlings, the preferred image of the European Social Franchising Network.
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Posted by cooperatoby in Uncategorized.
Here’s a video made for the PASE project of me expatiating on how local authorities can help the social economy.
Posted by cooperatoby in EU, social economy.
Tags: Prezi
I just transformed the short Powerpoint presentation I made in Prague on Wednesday into a more dynamic thing, a Prezi. Last weekend in Hungary I learnt that this software has been created by a Budapest business that is active in helping the Roma. So here’s an outline of the EU’s policy on social enterprise.
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Posted by cooperatoby in cooperative, EU, social economy.
Tags: social franchising
Research recently carried out by the European Social Franchising Network (ESFN) shows that Europe’s social franchises probably employ around 13,000 people – two-thirds of whom are disadvantaged or disabled. And they are growing fast. The ESFN conference held on 18th October 2011 in Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre on London’s South Bank celebrated this fact.
Social franchising has slowly built up quite a head of steam among policy-makers, and ESFN itself, established as a European Economic Interest Group in 2008, now has 31 member businesses. The conference attracted people from 11 countries – including not only many young social franchisors of the future, but also UK’s Minister for Civil Society, Nick Hurd. He said that we need social franchises more than ever to resolve social problems in a vital way, by giving people a voice and keeping government of the way. He pointed to the need for better links between social enterprises and the financial establishment, and looked forward to the launch of Big Society Capital with £600 million to invest. There will also be a £10 million technical assistance fund to help social enterprises become ready for investment.
Introducing the event, ESFN’s chair, Keith Richardson, positioned social franchising as being the tool to create a step change in the size of the social economy, taking it from being 10% of the economy to being 25%. Firstly, he said, it is essentially about a structured exchange of information for mutual benefit. Secondly, it is market-oriented: unlike other business development techniques, it lives or dies with the success of the businesses it creates. Its strength is that when the franchises own the franchisor, all the parties share the same interest in growth, because costs fall dramatically with scale. Mr Richardson hoped that through such solidarity, social enterprises created to preserve public services could avoid the fate of the employee-owned bus companies of the 80s, which were picked off one by one by larger firms.
Inspiring examples
The scene was set by inspiring examples from several countries. Elisabet Mattsson and Renate Goergen of Le Mat described their transnational model, in which hotel chains in Italy and Sweden share an umbrella. Alistair Wilson told how the School for Social Entrepreneurs has spread round the globe. Ewa Sadowska described how, after the fall of communism in Poland, her parents set up the Barka Foundation which settled in a disused collective farm and turned it into a home for people suffering from mental illness. This has grown into a system of 60 therapeutic, education, employment and housing initiatives across Poland. She herself has come to London to work with Polish immigrants who have fallen on hard times. Sven Huysmans described how FIETSenWERK (Bike & Work) provides 600 full-time equivalent jobs servicing bicycles at railway stations across Flanders.
The conference also heard from what is believed to be the largest social franchise, Komosie, which operates 140 enterprises in Flanders. Komosie started out renovating and retailing second-hand goods, but has since branched out into energy saving.
A 21st century model
The event discussed the theoretical foundations of the social franchising idea as well as its practical implementation and benefits. Keith Richardson, Chair of the ESFN, talked about how starlings manage to co-operate without having a boss because their self-interest is in harmony with the collective interest. Robin Murray of the Young Foundation gave hope to our new wave social franchisors by drawing up a 2 x 2 matrix: he set out the two dimensions of subsidiarity – top-down versus bottom-up – and openness – standardisation versus the ‘generative’ method of social franchising. The way forward in his view is to be generative, and to open up possibilities for new enterprises, rather than forcing them into straightjacket. This seems to describe exactly the way franchisers like Le Mat describe and think of themselves.
He also reframed the process that social franchising enables, talking about it not as scaling up (a mass-production concept) but as diffusion. “In the social economy we sometimes haven’t recognised the benefits of structure,” he said. “Social franchising means moving from implicit to explicit systems. I think social franchising can become a real model for the expansion of the social economy.”
Echoing Nick Hurd, he felt that policy had laid too much stress on new starts and not enough on helping existing firms to expand. A 21st-century model of how to expand would include not only demand-side measures such as a kitemark, common sales and marketing, lobbying and policy campaigning, but also supply-side measures like training, technology, systems, methods and supply chains. The goal should be to find a way of reaping the benefits of scale without losing the benefits of smallness.
New EU fund for social enterprises
In the workshop on the European Social Fund, Lloyd Broad from Birmingham city Council, to whom the UK government has delegated the management of transnationality and innovation in the ESF ‘England and Gibraltar’ programme, familiarised us with the recently published Commission proposals for the 2014-2020 period. The ESF has been given four thematic objectives – employment, lifelong learning, inclusion and – in the poorest ‘cohesion’ areas – administrative reform. At least 20% of funds should be allocated to inclusion, and 80% of the money should be concentrated on just four out of 18 ‘investment priorities’. Six of these fall under the heading of social inclusion, and ‘social economy and social enterprise’ is one of these six. Even if governments do not select it – and on the face of it this is unlikely – social enterprise activity can just as well be carried out within other investment priorities such as ‘active inclusion’ or ‘community-led local development’. The overall message is that social enterprise is firmly embedded in the future of the ESF.
The ESF will be worth about €84 billion between 2014 and 2020. But in addition to this, the Commission also proposes to reserve nearly a billion euro for a new programme called the Programme for Social Change and Innovation (PSCI). This brings together the existing Progress programme with EURES and the European Progress Microfinance Facility. It will carry on the existing mutual learning activities such as the social inclusion peer reviews and beef up the international labour exchange role of EURES. Particularly interesting to social franchisors is the intention to practically double the current investment into the EPMF and to open it out to include investment in social enterprises. Approximately €95 million is set aside for social enterprise investment in the seven-year programming period.
At this stage the regulations are not finally agreed. The European Parliament and Council will now consider them, and they should be finalised by the middle of 2012.
What do social enterprises want?
The day closed with a the panel discussion, in which Elisabet Mattsson put forward the priorities for improving the environment for social franchising: a solid legal basis, more and smarter finance, a five-year competence development plan in each country, a mentoring programme and better organisation through long-term networking. For Jürgen Blondeel of Komosie Europe’s biggest social franchise with 4,000 employees, the priorities are development finance for the franchisor for the initial period of 3-5 years and a learning network for franchisors and franchisees on finance and methodology.
From the side of the public authorities, Emmanuel Vallens of the European Commission’s Internal Market DG outlined the content of the forthcoming communication on the Social Business Initiative (SBI). The motive behind the Commission’s rediscovered interest in the social economy is to relaunch the European single market and bring it closer to citizens. This means it should promote not only competitiveness but also social inclusion. The first step in that is to make clear that social enterprise is not just about labour market inclusion, but a much broader concept embracing businesses that make a profit in order to create social value. The SBI will act in three areas:
• access to finance – streamlining the Structural Funds, creating a framework for social investment funds and spreading microfinance;
• visibility – better information about social enterprises, as well as better information to them;
• the regulatory environment – in such areas as legal statutes, public procurement and state aid.
Further information:
European Social Franchising Network: http://www.socialfranchising.coop
Guardian’s Social Enterprise Network article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-enterprise-network/2011/oct/10/social-franchising-effective-european-network
Online Q&A session: http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-enterprise-network/2011/oct/19/best-bits-social-franchising-social-enterprise
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Posted by cooperatoby in EU, social economy.
Tags: co-operative, procurement, social economy
Conclusions of the PASE project’s seminar “Public procurement and public social partnerships – The prospects for social enterprises and the reform of EU rules”, held in Forest/Vorst, Brussels, on 26th October 2011.
by Toby Johnson, moderator
The seminar has looked at two contrasting regional approaches to increasing the involvement of social enterprises in the delivery of public services. Marche’s approach is via legislation to facilitate contracting to social co-operatives, while in Flanders the approach is more pragmatic – working within the current rules rather than seeking to change them. We have also heard what the European federal bodies have to say about the reform of public procurement legislation that is under way. The chief point is that when you are dealing with social services, quality needs to pay a much more important role in purchasing decisions. The good news is that the Commission seems to have taken this on board. Whist we are unlikely to see the “cheapest offer” criterion abolished, we can expect more quality-oriented techniques to be used much more widely.
Build capacity of social enterprises
We need to take a businesslike approach. Firstly this involves collaborating pragmatically with partners from the private sector. This might be through sub-contracting or it might be through engaging in trilateral negotiations between the public, private and social enterprise sectors to define the best niches to expand into.
Secondly, evidence from both Italy and Flanders shows that a promising method is to focus on key business ideas – for instance social care of bicycle hire and repair. The technique of social franchising enables you to develop the business idea centrally and then roll it out across an entire country.
In some countries there is the fear that social enterprises might be used as a ‘Trojan horse’ to blaze the trail for the handing over of public services to private companies, but in many areas the contracts concerned offer so little profit that this is not an issue. In any case social enterprises are typically offering new and innovative services, not taking over existing ones.
Improve awareness among public authorities
National authorities need to build up knowledge centres. Some national websites are setting an example, such as Europa Decentraal (http://www.europadecentraal.nl) in the Netherlands.
As quality of service delivery is difficult to measure in advance, the accreditation of potential suppliers is a more realistic approach. As part of the Better Future for the Social Economy (BFSE) network, a learning network of ESF Managing authorities led by Poland, Lombardy has developed a tool for measuring the social added value of social enterprises. It is currently being piloted, and can be downloaded from: http://socialeconomy.pl/x/616186?projekt=531302.
Influence attitudes
The fourth of the project’s four areas of intervention should not, I think, be targeted so much at changing the attitudes of the general public – that’s too broad and slow a job – but of challenging vested interests. Not only existing suppliers but procurement officials. They don’t want to be given the job of judging imponderables like quality or jobs created, and they don’t want the risk of having their call for tenders challenged or cancelled for being unfair. They are quite naturally risk-averse. We need to make procurement officers life easy for them – not more difficult. Training courses have already been delivered in Britain and Sweden, and as the project has identified, more are needed.
We can also seek to influence the profession by working through the national professional institutions of procurement (see list at http://www.cips.org/en/aboutcips/Global-Partners-Links/).
Lobbying is needed, and much of this has to be local and national. Flanders offers a very clear case of this, where the social partners in the construction sector have so far succeeded in excluding social enterprises from bidding for contracts worth over €135,000 by denying them certification on the grounds that they constitute unfair competition. But the EU level is important in setting the tone, and there is certainly an appetite among decision-makers for bringing procurement to bear to address social problems.
Follow-up
PASE has also identified three follow-up actions that should be taken, and is researching ways to implement them:
1. An annual school for public-social partnership
2. Action plans using TSR (territorial social responsibility) and TQS (territorial quality standards)
3. An online self-assessment tool
PASE project: http://www.pase-project.eu
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Posted by cooperatoby in EU.
Tags: BBC, ethics, journalism
I’ve just been impressed by the subtle way that journalists influence political debate. On the BBC’s Today programme, Evan Davies has just had a perfectly civilised conversation with Guy Verhofstadt, now an MEP but previously Belgium’s prime minister. How different from last week on Newsnight, where Jeremy Paxman permitted himself to be extremely rude to Mr Verhofstadt. Introducing him casually as “He used to run Belgium,” (my grandmother used to say “She is the cat’s mother”) Paxman went on to ask him whether he would welcome Britain contributing to the euro bailout fund. When Mr Verhofstadt unsurprisingly answered that of course he would welcome it, Paxman then jumped in to deride him with the most extraordinary comment: “Spoken like a loyal Belgian”. This portmanteau combines two insults: to the concept of loyalty as well as to the country of Belgium. He implies that being loyal to Belgium is somehow a bad or ridiculous thing. I don’t think a respected journalist can permit himself to be so high and mighty. No one elected Paxman, and he should remember that. I wonder what clubbable spirit promoted him to be far more courteous to his studio guests, one of whom was the previous editor of the Economist.
Perhaps the difference is in the target audience between Radio 4 and BBC 2 television. Perhaps the difference is that Evan Davies has ventured onto Belgian turf, at the Euro Summit, whereas Paxman was sitting back in the comfort of his own armchair, railing at Mr Verhofstadt, who was imprisoned behind a screen. Perhaps it’s that Paxman is subconsciously promoting his recent book on the British Empire. Perhaps it’s that he is genuinely rattled by the peril that the world’s economic stability is in. At any rate, it shows the British political culture in a bad light, with knockabout journalism uncomfortably close to the real fisticuffs that routinely take place in the Italian parliament.
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Posted by cooperatoby in EU, social economy.
Tags: SBI
I spent the week before last in Kraków at the 2nd ‘Active Europe’ conference, organised by FEBEA, the European Federation of Ethical and Alternative Banks. I co-chaired, along with Hugues Sibille of Crédit Coopératif, a workshop on public procurement and social enterprises. The conference attracted large contingents not only from host country Poland but from France, including such luminaries as ex-regional policy commissioner Danuta Hubner, current commissioner Janus Lewandowski (by video), professor Jerzy Hausner and minister Michal Boni, adviser to the Polish Prime minister.
One of the hardest-working speakers was Raymond Maes, head of the unit in the employment DG that is responsible for microfinance and social enterprise. He made the point that the forthcoming EU financial framework is not all about austerity – in fact it increases the social and education budgets. The Social Business Initiative, which will be launched in October with the backing of three DGs, recognises the crucial role that social enterprise and the social economy have to play in ensuring that growth is inclusive. The SBI will address three barriers to social enterprise growth: finance, visibility and legal recognition:
• On the first point, the Commission intends to give concrete support to social enterprises not only through a dedicated investment fund, but also through gearing up the ESF and ERDF;
• The second issue covers not only labelling but measuring social impact;
• On the last point, the proposed definition turns on the social nature of the enterprise’s mission, rather than its legal form.
The challenge, he said, is to keep up the political momentum.
The conference drew stern conclusions regarding banking regulation post-crisis. On the one hand the Basel III directive could prove fatal to ethical banks, as it would practically double the capital they are required to hold. On the other hand a sort of European CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) could be helpful, by strengthening the involvement of local associations in banking. Regarding procurement, the social economy is clear that the simple criterion of the cheapest price is inadequate to the task of ensuring that public spending creates social value. Member states are already free to use tools such as social clauses and reserved markets, and these need to be taken up more widely. The main problem is that the people who take the decisions are risk-averse. Training is needed, as well as a more assertive approach by social enterprises to public markets.
Two new tools help more rational buying decisions
The event gave the Polish regional development ministry a hook upon which to hang a seminar of the BFSE (Better Future for the Social Economy) network. This seminar looked at two tools that have been developed to enable a more holistic approach to procurement. The first is the BFSE tool for measuring the social added value of social enterprises, developed in Lombardy. It is based on accounting principles (e.g. verifiability, credibility, comparability) and assesses 11 dimensions (e.g. economy, innovation, equal opportunities) according to indicators, numeric or logical. Each dimension is scored and the average is calculated.
The second is more controversial: a methodology for carrying out a cost-benefit analysis of socially responsible public procurement. This model has been developed by the Bundeswehr University in Munich – yes, that’s right, the German army’s own staff college! It takes the seven aspects of social responsibility set out by the European Commission – employment, decent work, SMEs, inclusion, fair trade, accessibility and CSR – and breaks each of them down into 15 decisions. It does not attempt to monetise these factors. The lawyers say that decisions based on the model might not stand up if challenged in court – but I don’t see how they can be less solid than the many case-by-case decisions that are already taken to justify purchasing decisions based on the MEAT (most economically advantageous tender) criterion.
The BFSE tool is at http://socialeconomy.pl/x/616186;jsessionid=D00A0F943CFABB29C1A3C6FAC3335016?projekt=531302
Regions are innovating in the way they procure
A second workshop in the main conference looked at the way regions can take action to get better value for money by involving social enterprises in delivering public services. The Marche region of Italy has stolen a march on the rest of Europe by abolishing the “cheapest offer” and takes social added value into account when assessing bids. The commune of Forest/Vorst in Brussels is also developing legislation to implement social clauses.
Proposals for a new social investment facility
Following the conference, a further side meeting brought together social and ethical banks to discuss a proposal brokered by the Euclid network to establish ESIF – a European Social Investment Facility. In outline, the facility would act as a ‘double multiplier’ for an initial sum allocated by the European Investment Bank: the European public sector money would attract matching both from the national and regional level and from the private (and social economy) sector. The EIF has already set aside €50m, and intends to follow the model of the European Progress Microfinance Facility (EPMF) launched last year, in that it will invest in funds that in turn invest in social enterprises. However it intends only to do so by means of equity, whereas some of its potential customers see a need for other sorts of money such as guarantees. A further debatable issue is whether the facility should fund risky ventures by means of grant as well as loan. There is a lot of enthusiasm for joint action, and the result of the discussions was that a collective response has been made to the Commission’s consultation on social investment funds. For a fuller report see: http://www.euclidnetwork.eu/pages/en/launch-of-european-social-investment-facility.html
ESF learning networks
At the conference’s final plenary, my private conclusions were that if our aim is to promote inclusion as well as prosperity, then investment capital must be seen as just one part of a broader strategy for inclusive and social entrepreneurship. And we need to focus less on individual entrepreneurs and more on social entrepreneurs. We have a job to do to build inclusive and social entrepreneurship strategies in the EU’s member states. There are as it happens two networks already doing this within the European Social Fund: COPIE in inclusive entrepreneurship and BFSE in the social economy:
• COPIE [http:www.cop-ie.eu] is working to improve the reach and quality of entrepreneurship education, business support and microfinance;
• BFSE [http://socialeconomy.pl] is addressing five issues that are key to the growth of social enterprises: state aid and SSGIs, public procurement, measuring social added value, social franchising and finance.
Both networks will finish their work in 2012. Hopefully they will not only go out with a bang but will give rise to a broader network in the 2014-2020 programming period.
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Posted by cooperatoby in Uncategorized.
Tags: equality
I read in Guardian Weekly that the British universities minister, David Willetts, blames social immobility on female emancipation. He says that well-educated careerist women have taken all the good jobs that working-class men would otherwise have been able to get. He says he has nothing against feminism, but it has trumped egalitarianism.
I beg to differ. Surely his perception is based on a prejudice, an asymmetry. As a child, when I was out in the car with my father, he used to complain at T-junctions that the cars would go past quickly, but then some straggling cyclists would get in the way. I (being a cyclist and not a motorist at that time) would object that he might as well blame the cars from blocking the way before the cyclists as blame the cyclists for blocking the way after the cars,
And so it is with Willetts. He blames two-earner couples for blocking the path of working-class men. But his perception is selective, as he ignores working-class women. There is a basic symmetry he’s overlooking. It’s not just the middle class that have benefitted from women’s equality at work. Working-class families have benefitted just as much if not more. Social mobility is just as much about increasing opportunities for the female half of the population as it is about male careers. The underlying issue is the fact that such inequality exists in the first place, not which of the oppressed groups is benefitting most.
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Posted by cooperatoby in cooperative, social economy.
Tags: COPIE, self-employment
At the COPIE mid-term event Kick-starting Economic Recovery in Berlin on 31 March, Professor Rolf Sternberg of Hannover University talked about the economic effects of necessity entrepreneurship. Professor Sternberg is part of the team that produces GEM, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, which has just published its 2010 report.
In his allotted 10 minutes, he explained that GEM divides the world into two types of entrepreneurs:
- opportunity entrepreneurs: “I am involved in this firm to take advantage of a business opportunity”
- necessity entrepreneurs: “I am involved in this form because I have no better choices for work”
GEM’s research shows that necessity entrepreneurship is more economically relevant than they expected, and is getting more so. About 2 million Europeans are necessity entrepreneurs. Greece has 2.3% of adults in this category, while Denmark has only 0.2%. Unspoken message: self-employment makes you poor.
I didn’t find myself anywhere in this classification – yet I am undeniably an entrepreneur in a small way, or at the very least self-employed. GEM’s oversimplified picture leaves out all those people who go into business as away to meet needs that are higher up the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs than the search for profit or power. Two major motivations in this category are:
- to change the world for the better – leading to social enterprises
- to gain control over one’s own working life – leading to worker’s co-operatives.
If we fail to recognise these value-based motivations for self-employment, then we will fall into the trap of censoring the message that self-employment can be fun – so we will end up with fewer entrepreneurs and a more ossified society.
Professor Sternberg said that GEM has developed a more sophisticated typology of entrepreneurship. I’m not sure it’s published, but it deserves to be.
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One of the hardest-working speakers was Raymond Maes, head of the unit in the employment DG that is responsible for microfinance and social enterprise. He made the point that the forthcoming EU financial framework is not all about austerity – in fact it increases the social and education budgets. The Social Business Initiative, which will be launched in October with the backing of three DGs, recognises the crucial role that social enterprise and the social economy have to play in ensuring that growth is inclusive. The SBI will address three barriers to social enterprise growth: finance, visibility and legal recognition:
