MBA in Social Entrepreneurship

NEW for September 2006

In September 2006 UWIC Business School in Cardiff is launching an MBA in Social Entrepreneurship as a specialist option within its well-established MBA programme.

Wales has a strong and thriving social economy, the Wales Cooperative Centre, and, in Tower Colliery, a leading example of cooperative enterprise. UWIC already has strong links with Tower, Tyrone O’Sullivan being an honorary fellow, and the Welsh Institute for Research into Cooperatives being a recognized Research Centre focusing on the social economy. All of these aspects have been combined to provide a specialist MBA covering all aspects of the social economy. This expertise will also form part of the course itself, via guest speakers and visits.

Course Structure

The structure of this proposed specialized MBA will comprise the five core modules of the current programme, with an additional two electives, and a customized version of the dissertation. The two additional electives would be:

• Social Entrepreneurship: introduction to the concept of the entrepreneur and its extension when referring to cooperative and socially focused activity.
• Theory of the Social Economy: definitions, identification of different aspects including cooperatives, community-based enterprises, fair trade businesses, etc., and specific features of social enterprise such as different forms of finance.

Students taking this specialized MBA would be required to produce a dissertation focused on social enterprise under one of the following two headings:

• Case-study of an existing social enterprise, evaluating its past successes and providing insights for improving its future performance;
• Business plan for establishing a new social enterprise.

We would also offer specific industrial visits to social enterprises, initially within Wales, but possibly further afield in the future.

Entry based on experience

In common with the rest of the MBA, admission to the MBA Social Entrepreneurship is made available to those without formal qualifications, over 25 years of age and with relevant experience.  Applications based upon a commitment or active experience within cooperative, voluntary, trade union, social and community organisations are especially welcome.

Welsh Institute for Research into Cooperatives

The specialist MBA program will be taught by members of the Welsh Institute for Research into Cooperatives, Wales’s first national research unit on the social economy. WIRC was established in April 2000 with the aim of providing strategic and applied research covering all aspects of the social economy and is based at UWIC Business School.

The social economy itself is broadly defined as the area covering the relationships between political, social and economic objectives and policy formulation and implementation. Specific examples of such matters include: employee ownership, community enterprise, co-operative production, co-operative retailing, community provision of services and credit unions. The programme will cover the wider social economy, not focusing exclusively on cooperatives.

WIRC members provide academic analyses to raise the profile of the social economy and especially the co-operative sector within the academic community, while keeping a strong policy focus and sharing their academic skills to support co-operative enterprises in Wales.

Program Staff

The Course Coordinator is Molly Scott Cato (centre), who has worked at WIRC since 2002. She has a first degree in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford and a PhD in economics from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Her book about a cooperative future for employment in the South Wales Valleys was published by the University of Wales Press in 2004. Since joining WIRC Molly has been involved in the Coop Audit of Wales and in providing consultancy research for Wales Cooperative Centre on the issues of cooperative procurement, mutual housing, and the mutual organization of childcare services.

Deputy Course Coordinator is Russell Smith (right). With other colleagues in the Business School, Russell helped in the establishment of the Welsh Institute for Research into Co-operatives 2000. As a research-active member of WIRC, he has collaborated on a number of conference papers and publications arising out of research being undertaken at Tower Colliery, a worker owned co-operative in Hirwaun, South Wales as well as other projects and papers relating to the social economy in Wales. He is currently undertaking research commissioned by the Wales Cooperative Centre looking into the potential of the social economy for delivery of services. The sectors being investigated include housing, childcare, debt finance and care for the elderly.

Len Arthur (left), Director of WIRC and UWIC Business School’s Director of Research and Graduate Studies, will also be involved in teaching on the MBA. Originally a sociologist and social historian Len’s trade union work led him to an interest in critical management studies. He sees Tower Colliery as an example of critical management in practice and this research interest led him to set up WIRC in 2000. His current research interest is rooted in workers cooperatives but also in the extent to which the social economy can be seen as a social movement. In this regard, recent thinking has moved toward the approach of ‘new social movement’ frameworks and the idea of socially produced space and boundaries acting both as democratic alternatives and being a challenge to the market and private ownership.