Challenging social enterprise debates in Bangladesh

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to highlight key issues for the social enterprise field in Bangladesh, which are not sufficiently addressed in current social enterprise debates and discourse.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews key economic and political debates in the current social enterprise literature. It then attempts to demonstrate how these are insufficient for critical analysis of social enterprise in Bangladesh. The paper draws on field research and literature on the Grameen social enterprises to inform this argument.

Findings – The paper finds that this review of the main debates in a Bangladeshi context raises many pertinent and urgent questions about the role of social enterprise in addressing: complex market failures; the boundaries of the field in the informal and formal sectors; the conflicts caused by contending political objectives and donor/creditor expectations; and broader development issues.

Research limitations/implications – The paper focuses on the economic and political factors, which differ between Western and developing world environments. It does this with the specific example of the Grameen Energy and Grameen Bank social enterprises from Bangladesh. Whilst this is sufficient to support the paper's aim, it limits the scope of the findings.

Originality/value – This paper highlights a gap in the literature which has had little attention in academic or practitioner fields of social enterprise.