Understanding Social Enterprise Law: The UK Experience
This book provides a comprehensive understanding of social enterprise law, drawing on the UK experience. It examines what social enterprise law is, why it is needed, and how legal frameworks recognise and institutionalise the distinctive characteristics of social enterprise, addressing a critical gap in both theoretical and practical understandings of social enterprise law.
For theoretical perspectives, the book integrates and clarifies existing studies on social enterprise conceptualisation and provides a systematic analysis of the concrete meaning and functions of social enterprise law. It argues that social enterprise law constitutes a coherent conceptual legal framework within business organisation law, offering an alternative institutional pathway for organising commercial activity and contributing to wider debates on corporate purpose, stakeholder governance and the relationship between law and society.
For practical perspectives, through examinations of specific legal forms of social enterprise, the book demonstrates how different legal mechanisms institutionalise the characteristics of social enterprise while identifying legal and practical challenges. By linking these legal forms and practices to theoretical analysis, it highlights the potential of social enterprise law to support the sector’s development and offers insights for social enterprise networks and policymakers.
This book is highly relevant to ongoing debates on corporate governance reform, social welfare provision, and the role of social enterprise in addressing institutional failures. Its findings are particularly timely given the increasing recognition of social enterprise as an important actor in bridging gaps left by market and government failures in securing public welfare. However, while social enterprise is widely studied internationally, the legal frameworks governing social enterprise in the UK have received limited attention. This book positions itself at the forefront of current research by addressing this gap and offering a comprehensive analysis of UK-specific legal frameworks.
Dr Lin Zhang is a Visiting Lecturer at The City Law School, City St George’s, University of London. She holds a PhD and an LLM from the University of Bristol and an LLB from Nankai University. Her research focuses on social enterprise law, company law and corporate governance in the UK, with particular interests in corporate purpose, corporate accountability and sustainability. Her work also includes comparative research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues in China and the UK.