Developing Scotland's Economy: Increasing The Role Of Inclusive And Democratic Business Models

Footnotes

1. Economic democracy or democratic economy is about shifting ownership and decision-making powers to a broader set of stakeholders that includes workers, consumers, suppliers, communities and the broader public sector.

2. Inclusive and Democratic Business Model(s) IDBM, is used as a shorthand throughout this work to refer to social enterprises, employee-owned businesses, worker co-operatives, co-operatives, Development Trusts and other forms of democratic ownership models. These are referred to as the Social and Solidarity Economy, Social Economy or Inclusive and Democratic Enterprises in other countries and academia. In using the term IDBMs, we are not diluting individual elements but augmenting by giving them more collective strength. Furthermore, whilst there are distinctions between the different types of IDBMs, they are not mutually exclusive and there is crossover and bleed between these forms.

3. See here for responses to proposed Community Wealth Building Legislations.

4. See here for outline on proposed Wellbeing and Sustainable Development Legislation.

5. This target needs to be reviewed by the Economic Democracy Group in light of the issues in establishing an accurate baseline. The most recently available data referred to in the Landscape section suggests there are 6,844 IDBMs in 2022. This figure is drawn from 3 sources: Social Enterprise Census 2021 (CEIS, 2021)., 6047; Co-operative and Mutual Economy 2023 report, 621 (Co-Operatives UK, 2023); and Employee-owned Businesses, (Co-operative Development Scotland, 2022), 195. Additionally current Business in Scotland report Time Trends - Businesses in Scotland: 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) puts the number of private businesses in Scotland at 340,760. A target of 5% for IDBMs would mean 17,038 business. Due to the differences in timings and methodological approaches between the current data sources, it is not possible to give a single figure estimate for the number of social enterprises, cooperatives and employee-owned businesses in a specific year, or to provide this as a percentage of the total business base

6. These figures will now be an underestimate of the current position as businesses continue to report transition to employee-owned status.

7. This includes recommendations 6, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 16.

8. Recent impact of the Scottish Government funded Accelerate programme run by Community Enterprise (CE) showed that 23% are now trading and a further 19% are planning to. Indicating a growth and potential future growth in trading by the Third Sector.