To cite: Yang TC, Power M, Moss RH, et al. Are free school meals failing families? Exploring the ... more To cite: Yang TC, Power M, Moss RH, et al. Are free school meals failing families? Exploring the relationship between child food insecurity, child mental health and free school meal status during COVID-19: national crosssectional surveys. BMJ Open 2022;12:e059047.
Much of the effort toward building resilience has been directed at identifying appropriate metric... more Much of the effort toward building resilience has been directed at identifying appropriate metrics and indicators of system resilience, and from this, interventions to strengthen resilience. An essential ingredient of such resilience-building efforts is to apply public processes of dialogue and diagnosis to identify systems fragility and potential for failure. Social learning processes allow people to take new perspectives in understanding their own and other's interests and values, to identify problems and formulate solutions by focusing on the potential for systemic failure. Diagnosis and dialogue tools used in a participatory process in Northern Thailand included food systems mapping, identifying potential points of failure within systems, and applying a self-assessment tool structured around resilience characteristics. This process proved important for developing stakeholder understanding of systems thinking and of concepts of resilience. Yet it is a process that is not with...
Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts an... more Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resilience (robustness, recovery, and reorientation—the three “Rs”). We focus on enhancing resilience of food system outcomes and argue this will require food system actors adapting their activities, noting that activities do not change spontaneously but in response to a change in drivers: an opportunity or a threat. However, operationalizing resilience enhancement involves normative choices and will result in decisions having to be negotiated about trade-offs among food system outcomes for different stakeholders. New approaches to including different food system actors’ perceptions and goals are needed to build food systems that are better po...
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research
PurposeSocial enterprises (SEs) face tensions when combining financial and social missions, and t... more PurposeSocial enterprises (SEs) face tensions when combining financial and social missions, and this is particularly evident in the scaling process. Although extant research mainly focuses on SEs that integrate their social and financial missions, this study aims to unpack social impact scaling strategies in differentiated hybrid organizations (DHOs) through the case of African SEs.Design/methodology/approachThe study entails an inductive multiple case study approach based on four case SEs: work integration social enterprises (WISEs) and fair trade producer social enterprises (FTPSEs) in Uganda and Kenya. A total of 24 semi-structured interviews were collected together with multiple secondary data sources and then coded and analyzed through the rigorous Gioia et al. (2013) methodology to build a theoretical model.FindingsThe results indicate that SEs, as differentiated hybrids, implement four types of social impact scaling strategies toward beneficiaries and benefits (penetration, b...
Agricultural supply chains of forest-risk commodities such as soy, palm oil, and cocoa have risen... more Agricultural supply chains of forest-risk commodities such as soy, palm oil, and cocoa have risen to the top of the global sustainability agenda. Demand-side actors, including consumer-goods companies, retailers, and civil society organizations have coalesced around a growing number of sustainable supply chain policies. However, despite rapid advances in tools and methods to convert data into useful information about impacts and policy effectiveness, and their implementation for decision-making is lagging. There is an urgent need to examine such demand-led action and understand how to accelerate progress towards agricultural supply chain sustainability. Here, we explore how demand-side actors within globalized supply chains see limitations in knowledge and barriers to progress in the context of forest-risk commodities. We draw from 20 semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions with manufacturers, retailers, NGOs, and data providers. Our findings show that civil socie...
Research in the sociology of organizations, Sep 22, 2022
The common good refers to contextual conditions that contribute to human wellbeing and flourishin... more The common good refers to contextual conditions that contribute to human wellbeing and flourishing, such as prosperous communities and environmental sustainability. In this paper, we consider how entrepreneurship impacts society by investigating the generalized outcomes of social entrepreneurship on the common good. From a qualitative study of ten large and profitable social enterprises in the United Kingdom, we theorize how social entrepreneurship contributes to the common good in the short and long term. We also conjecture how some commercial practices undermine the common good and further, explain how the common good performs as a conceptual anchor for social entrepreneurship.
KEYTHEMES The historical roots of social enterprises (SEs). The positioning of SEs within the... more KEYTHEMES The historical roots of social enterprises (SEs). The positioning of SEs within the social economy. The size and growth of the social enterprise sector internationally. International differences in the role of SEs. The role of national, regional and local government in facilitating the development of SEs within the economy.
Abstract In the emergent literature, food ‘on-the-go’ (OTG) tends to be addressed as a consumptio... more Abstract In the emergent literature, food ‘on-the-go’ (OTG) tends to be addressed as a consumption trend. However, considering that it entails significant amounts of packaging and food waste and has seen enormous growth in the UK since the 1990s, it is not sufficiently understood how OTG emerged as a sector. Conceptualising OTG as a provisioning practice and adopting a ‘Learning History’ approach, we aggregate journalistic columns and expert interviews into lineages that explain sectoral developments over time, and we ask how stakeholders frame OTG’s emergence and linked waste issues. We first show how OTG derives from an interplay of actors and shifts in socio-spatial organisation within the four areas of domestic economy and convenience, health and environment, urban space and policy, and corporate economy and technology. Subsequently, we outline typical understandings of packaging and food waste and shortcomings therein. Extending debates on consumer responsibilisation, we identify narratives that sideline producers’ focus on growth and their role in shaping OTG provision. Stakeholders often frame (1) OTG as demand-driven by reference to an ostensible ‘convenience culture’, (2) material waste as an issue of the ‘consumer-facing’ end of the supply chain, i.e. concerning food wrappers rather than materials used ‘back-of-store’ for logistics, processing, and hygiene and (3) food waste as a matter of avoiding leftovers while taking for granted resource-intensive, “wasteful” foods as part of businesses’ portfolios. We conclude that addressing waste higher up the supply chain may allow for a more nuanced account of causes of, and solutions to, unsustainable provisioning practices.
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 2021
The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic provides an empirical testing ground for assessing the impact of criti... more The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic provides an empirical testing ground for assessing the impact of critical events on societal transitions. Such events are typically seen as exogenous to the transition process, an assumption which is investigated in this paper. Using a qualitative system dynamics modelling approach we conceptualize transition pathways as sets of interacting sequences of events. This enables the analysis of event sequences that constitute the evolving pandemic as impacting on those pathways. We apply this approach to the provision of (auto)mobility and food in the UK. This shows the way in which the pandemic has had a differential effect on ongoing transitions in both systems, sometimes slowing them down, and sometimes accelerating them. In addition, it reveals how it has established new transition pathways. The empirical work further shows how qualitative modelling with system dynamics facilitates an explicit and systematic comparative analysis of transition case studies.
Purpose – Social media has become an important part of daily interpersonal communication in conte... more Purpose – Social media has become an important part of daily interpersonal communication in contemporary society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes of UK consumers by identifying the hidden information in tweets, and provide a framework which can assist industry practitioners in managing social media data. Design/methodology/approach – Using a large-scale dataset of tweets relating to the Horsemeat scandal of 2013, a comprehensive data analysis framework, which comprises multidimensional scaling and sentiment analysis, alongside other methods, was applied to explore customers’ opinions. Findings – Making jokes in social media was a main trend in the tweets relating to Tesco during the Horsemeat scandal. Consumer sentiments were overall negative and burgers were the most mentioned product in the week-long period after the story broke. The posting of tweets was correlated with the timing of news coverage, which indicates that the traditional media is still crucial ...
The need for sustainability transitions is widely recognised, along with a concurrent need for th... more The need for sustainability transitions is widely recognised, along with a concurrent need for the evolution of knowledge systems to inform more effective policy action. Although there are many new policy targets relating to net zero emissions and other sustainability challenges, cities, regional and national governments are struggling to rapidly develop transformational policies to achieve them. As academics and practitioners who work at the science-policy interface, we identify specific knowledge and competency needs for governing sustainability transitions related to the interlinked phases of envisioning, implementing and evaluating. In short, coordinated reforms of both policy and knowledge systems are urgently needed to address the speed and scale of sustainability challenges. These include embedding systems thinking literacy, mainstreaming participatory policy making, expanding the capacity to undertake transdisciplinary research, more adaptive governance and continuous organisational learning. These processes must guide further knowledge development, uptake and use as part of an iterative and holistic process. Such deep-seated change in policy-knowledge systems will be disruptive and presents challenges for traditional organisational models of knowledge delivery, but is essential for successful sustainability transformations.
The SAGE Handbook of Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including ... more Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.
... Page 3. 168 B. Doherty and S. Tranchell Chunky (Mintel, 1998). ... Page 5. 170 B. Doherty and... more ... Page 3. 168 B. Doherty and S. Tranchell Chunky (Mintel, 1998). ... Page 5. 170 B. Doherty and S.Tranchell also enabled them to set up their own organizations, and hence was vital to the formation in 1993 of the co-operative licensed buying company (LBC) Kuapa Kokoo. ...
Purpose This paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their rol... more Purpose This paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their role in brand co-creation, through empirical and theoretical contributions derived from researching the marketing dynamics operating within a successful but atypical form of brand community, Fairtrade Towns (FTT). Design/methodology/approach The paper reflects a pragmatic application of Grounded Theory, which captured qualitative data from key “insiders”, with a particular emphasis on FTT steering group members and their role as “prosumers”. Data were gathered via ethnographic involvement within one town and semi-structured interviews with participants in others. Findings FTTs, as brand communities, demonstrate elements of co-creation that go beyond the dominant theories and models within the marketing literature. They operate in, and relate to, real places rather than the online environments that dominate the literature on this subject. Unusually, the interactions between brand marketers a...
To cite: Yang TC, Power M, Moss RH, et al. Are free school meals failing families? Exploring the ... more To cite: Yang TC, Power M, Moss RH, et al. Are free school meals failing families? Exploring the relationship between child food insecurity, child mental health and free school meal status during COVID-19: national crosssectional surveys. BMJ Open 2022;12:e059047.
Much of the effort toward building resilience has been directed at identifying appropriate metric... more Much of the effort toward building resilience has been directed at identifying appropriate metrics and indicators of system resilience, and from this, interventions to strengthen resilience. An essential ingredient of such resilience-building efforts is to apply public processes of dialogue and diagnosis to identify systems fragility and potential for failure. Social learning processes allow people to take new perspectives in understanding their own and other's interests and values, to identify problems and formulate solutions by focusing on the potential for systemic failure. Diagnosis and dialogue tools used in a participatory process in Northern Thailand included food systems mapping, identifying potential points of failure within systems, and applying a self-assessment tool structured around resilience characteristics. This process proved important for developing stakeholder understanding of systems thinking and of concepts of resilience. Yet it is a process that is not with...
Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts an... more Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resilience (robustness, recovery, and reorientation—the three “Rs”). We focus on enhancing resilience of food system outcomes and argue this will require food system actors adapting their activities, noting that activities do not change spontaneously but in response to a change in drivers: an opportunity or a threat. However, operationalizing resilience enhancement involves normative choices and will result in decisions having to be negotiated about trade-offs among food system outcomes for different stakeholders. New approaches to including different food system actors’ perceptions and goals are needed to build food systems that are better po...
International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research
PurposeSocial enterprises (SEs) face tensions when combining financial and social missions, and t... more PurposeSocial enterprises (SEs) face tensions when combining financial and social missions, and this is particularly evident in the scaling process. Although extant research mainly focuses on SEs that integrate their social and financial missions, this study aims to unpack social impact scaling strategies in differentiated hybrid organizations (DHOs) through the case of African SEs.Design/methodology/approachThe study entails an inductive multiple case study approach based on four case SEs: work integration social enterprises (WISEs) and fair trade producer social enterprises (FTPSEs) in Uganda and Kenya. A total of 24 semi-structured interviews were collected together with multiple secondary data sources and then coded and analyzed through the rigorous Gioia et al. (2013) methodology to build a theoretical model.FindingsThe results indicate that SEs, as differentiated hybrids, implement four types of social impact scaling strategies toward beneficiaries and benefits (penetration, b...
Agricultural supply chains of forest-risk commodities such as soy, palm oil, and cocoa have risen... more Agricultural supply chains of forest-risk commodities such as soy, palm oil, and cocoa have risen to the top of the global sustainability agenda. Demand-side actors, including consumer-goods companies, retailers, and civil society organizations have coalesced around a growing number of sustainable supply chain policies. However, despite rapid advances in tools and methods to convert data into useful information about impacts and policy effectiveness, and their implementation for decision-making is lagging. There is an urgent need to examine such demand-led action and understand how to accelerate progress towards agricultural supply chain sustainability. Here, we explore how demand-side actors within globalized supply chains see limitations in knowledge and barriers to progress in the context of forest-risk commodities. We draw from 20 semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions with manufacturers, retailers, NGOs, and data providers. Our findings show that civil socie...
Research in the sociology of organizations, Sep 22, 2022
The common good refers to contextual conditions that contribute to human wellbeing and flourishin... more The common good refers to contextual conditions that contribute to human wellbeing and flourishing, such as prosperous communities and environmental sustainability. In this paper, we consider how entrepreneurship impacts society by investigating the generalized outcomes of social entrepreneurship on the common good. From a qualitative study of ten large and profitable social enterprises in the United Kingdom, we theorize how social entrepreneurship contributes to the common good in the short and long term. We also conjecture how some commercial practices undermine the common good and further, explain how the common good performs as a conceptual anchor for social entrepreneurship.
KEYTHEMES The historical roots of social enterprises (SEs). The positioning of SEs within the... more KEYTHEMES The historical roots of social enterprises (SEs). The positioning of SEs within the social economy. The size and growth of the social enterprise sector internationally. International differences in the role of SEs. The role of national, regional and local government in facilitating the development of SEs within the economy.
Abstract In the emergent literature, food ‘on-the-go’ (OTG) tends to be addressed as a consumptio... more Abstract In the emergent literature, food ‘on-the-go’ (OTG) tends to be addressed as a consumption trend. However, considering that it entails significant amounts of packaging and food waste and has seen enormous growth in the UK since the 1990s, it is not sufficiently understood how OTG emerged as a sector. Conceptualising OTG as a provisioning practice and adopting a ‘Learning History’ approach, we aggregate journalistic columns and expert interviews into lineages that explain sectoral developments over time, and we ask how stakeholders frame OTG’s emergence and linked waste issues. We first show how OTG derives from an interplay of actors and shifts in socio-spatial organisation within the four areas of domestic economy and convenience, health and environment, urban space and policy, and corporate economy and technology. Subsequently, we outline typical understandings of packaging and food waste and shortcomings therein. Extending debates on consumer responsibilisation, we identify narratives that sideline producers’ focus on growth and their role in shaping OTG provision. Stakeholders often frame (1) OTG as demand-driven by reference to an ostensible ‘convenience culture’, (2) material waste as an issue of the ‘consumer-facing’ end of the supply chain, i.e. concerning food wrappers rather than materials used ‘back-of-store’ for logistics, processing, and hygiene and (3) food waste as a matter of avoiding leftovers while taking for granted resource-intensive, “wasteful” foods as part of businesses’ portfolios. We conclude that addressing waste higher up the supply chain may allow for a more nuanced account of causes of, and solutions to, unsustainable provisioning practices.
Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 2021
The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic provides an empirical testing ground for assessing the impact of criti... more The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic provides an empirical testing ground for assessing the impact of critical events on societal transitions. Such events are typically seen as exogenous to the transition process, an assumption which is investigated in this paper. Using a qualitative system dynamics modelling approach we conceptualize transition pathways as sets of interacting sequences of events. This enables the analysis of event sequences that constitute the evolving pandemic as impacting on those pathways. We apply this approach to the provision of (auto)mobility and food in the UK. This shows the way in which the pandemic has had a differential effect on ongoing transitions in both systems, sometimes slowing them down, and sometimes accelerating them. In addition, it reveals how it has established new transition pathways. The empirical work further shows how qualitative modelling with system dynamics facilitates an explicit and systematic comparative analysis of transition case studies.
Purpose – Social media has become an important part of daily interpersonal communication in conte... more Purpose – Social media has become an important part of daily interpersonal communication in contemporary society. The purpose of this paper is to explore the attitudes of UK consumers by identifying the hidden information in tweets, and provide a framework which can assist industry practitioners in managing social media data. Design/methodology/approach – Using a large-scale dataset of tweets relating to the Horsemeat scandal of 2013, a comprehensive data analysis framework, which comprises multidimensional scaling and sentiment analysis, alongside other methods, was applied to explore customers’ opinions. Findings – Making jokes in social media was a main trend in the tweets relating to Tesco during the Horsemeat scandal. Consumer sentiments were overall negative and burgers were the most mentioned product in the week-long period after the story broke. The posting of tweets was correlated with the timing of news coverage, which indicates that the traditional media is still crucial ...
The need for sustainability transitions is widely recognised, along with a concurrent need for th... more The need for sustainability transitions is widely recognised, along with a concurrent need for the evolution of knowledge systems to inform more effective policy action. Although there are many new policy targets relating to net zero emissions and other sustainability challenges, cities, regional and national governments are struggling to rapidly develop transformational policies to achieve them. As academics and practitioners who work at the science-policy interface, we identify specific knowledge and competency needs for governing sustainability transitions related to the interlinked phases of envisioning, implementing and evaluating. In short, coordinated reforms of both policy and knowledge systems are urgently needed to address the speed and scale of sustainability challenges. These include embedding systems thinking literacy, mainstreaming participatory policy making, expanding the capacity to undertake transdisciplinary research, more adaptive governance and continuous organisational learning. These processes must guide further knowledge development, uptake and use as part of an iterative and holistic process. Such deep-seated change in policy-knowledge systems will be disruptive and presents challenges for traditional organisational models of knowledge delivery, but is essential for successful sustainability transformations.
The SAGE Handbook of Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including ... more Full bibliographic details must be given when referring to, or quoting from full items including the author's name, the title of the work, publication details where relevant (place, publisher, date), pagination, and for theses or dissertations the awarding institution, the degree type awarded, and the date of the award.
... Page 3. 168 B. Doherty and S. Tranchell Chunky (Mintel, 1998). ... Page 5. 170 B. Doherty and... more ... Page 3. 168 B. Doherty and S. Tranchell Chunky (Mintel, 1998). ... Page 5. 170 B. Doherty and S.Tranchell also enabled them to set up their own organizations, and hence was vital to the formation in 1993 of the co-operative licensed buying company (LBC) Kuapa Kokoo. ...
Purpose This paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their rol... more Purpose This paper aims to further the authors’ understanding of brand communities, and their role in brand co-creation, through empirical and theoretical contributions derived from researching the marketing dynamics operating within a successful but atypical form of brand community, Fairtrade Towns (FTT). Design/methodology/approach The paper reflects a pragmatic application of Grounded Theory, which captured qualitative data from key “insiders”, with a particular emphasis on FTT steering group members and their role as “prosumers”. Data were gathered via ethnographic involvement within one town and semi-structured interviews with participants in others. Findings FTTs, as brand communities, demonstrate elements of co-creation that go beyond the dominant theories and models within the marketing literature. They operate in, and relate to, real places rather than the online environments that dominate the literature on this subject. Unusually, the interactions between brand marketers a...
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Papers by Bob Doherty