Social entrepreneurship & networks

The importance of networks as both an organisational form and an access route for the exchange of resources has increasingly been recognised in business and management. Social enterprise is just one area in which government funding has been used to support the development of formal support networks. This paper reviews the theoretical constructs of social network analysis and applies them to the analysis of a social enterprise network organisation. These constructs, relating to the structure of networks, the nature of the relationships or ties within them, the content of these ties, the context of the network overall, and the degree to which a network is purposive or goal-directed, are found to have relevance in shaping strategy and measuring performance for social enterprise networks.