Proposal - Dissertation Example

(Department of Trade and Industry, 2002) Considerable awareness is there on these concepts of social enterprises, but the problem is in reality the numbers of social enterprises are significantly lower in relation to normal profit-making companies. This kind of observation simply leads to the question as to whether this situation is taking place because there is scarcity of required finance that is essential for providing support to the growth of these organizations or whether people are less interested in setting up a social enterprise on account of the challenges it faces.

(Shortall, 2009) From the perspective of a lender, particularly of a banker, the flow of cash and the capability of repaying all the debts are the important factors and criteria for judging the application in the area of financing. This is indeed a challenge for the managers of the organizations like social enterprises service where the key funding sources are donations and grants. (Gates, 1998; Shortall, 2009) Subsidies provided by Government and donations offered by various public and private organizations or individuals are not dependable sources of revenue in any of the traditional lending system, consequently social enterprises shall necessitate adequate amount of collateral for compensating for that.

Cash flow on a regular basis is a very important thing for any traditional lending organization like banks to take into account at the time of lending any firm. It is generally found that banks are not as much interested in extending loans to social enterprises as in doing the same for other normal profit-making institutions. The bankers actually perceive the business and operational modes of social enterprises in a different way. (Brown, 2004; Department of Trade and Industry, 2002) In this background, it would be quite interesting to examine the environment of finance in this special type of enterprises, namely social enterprises.

The proposed research aims at conducting a thorough review of bankers’ actual awareness regarding business and operational modes of social enterprises, their attitudes towards social enterprises’ business modes and social enterprises’ ability to attract funds from traditional lenders like banks. Given the goals and nature of operation of these institutions, it seems that bankers would not be much likely to lend them funds. In this scenario, it would be interesting to examine the extent to which bankers are reluctant of giving funds to social enterprises and why they are reluctant.

For the purpose of the present research, the social enterprises of London will be taken into account. A significant number of social enterprises operate in different industrial sectors of London and a number commercial banks operating in London will be considered. Research Objectives: Given the research aim discussed in the earlier section, the research objectives of the study can be stated as follows: To build an enhanced understanding of awareness of bankers regarding the nature of operation of social enterprises.

To identify the bankers’ attitude towards lending social enterprises and to find out the sources of having the attitude they have built. To examine the ability of social enterprises in attracting funds from traditional lending organizations like banks. Research Questions: On the basis of the research obje