Abstract:
Democratic South Africa continues to slowly undo the adverse impacts of the
Apartheid era where resource access was championed along racial lines as a
consequence of Apartheid Spatial Planning which resulted in greater resource
accumulation and distribution to the white minority at the cost of the majority black,
coloured and Indian population. Social Enterprises (SEs) play a crucial role in
tackling the country’s social challenges within the South African ecosystem alongside
other sector players. The mobilisation of resources is a critical success factor for any
SE to realise their objectives as these resources facilitate the organisation’s
operations leading to positive value creation. Despite their value add, SEs face
significant resource constraints in pursuit of their mandate.
The objective of the research was to investigate through the geographic lens the key
resources that SEs require to carry out their mandate and how these SEs mobilise
these resources and price for their goods and services amidst the challenge of
resource constraints. 15 SEs in South Africa were interviewed as part of the research
located in Gauteng, Western Cape, and Mpumalanga provinces.
The study highlighted relationships as the most important resource for SEs in South
Africa and a gateway resource that facilitates access to other resource types.
Furthermore, the establishment and leveraging of relationships was the most
important strategy adopted alongside building credibility, aligning incentives through
shared value, scavenging, shapeshifting bricolage, and optimisation. Finally, the
research found that SEs adopt mostly discounted and value-based pricing as part of
their financial resource mobilisation to a greater extent and absorption pricing to a
lesser extent. The influence of geography had a positive and negative impact on both
resource mobilisation and pricing strategies adopted by SEs with the location of the
SE negatively impacting pricing charged to customers from marginalised areas on
the one hand for some service offerings but justifying higher prices charged for
services by some SEs based in better-resourced areas on the other hand. To guide
managers a conceptual framework was developed which integrated pricing and
resource mobilisation within the context of South Africa where the effects of
Apartheid-based spatial marginalisation are still evident today
