The Paradox of Enterprise

Abstract YouthSites consolidated as a “non-formal learning sector” in the wider political context of neoliberal reform of the welfare state. This chapter discusses how this context enabled growth and enterprise supporting visions of service, community, education, and the arts. Changes witnessed since 1990 have come about as a result of a particular kind of struggle over the growth of funding regimes that emerged in response to the privatization of welfare funding. These changes were designed and implemented through forms of new public management and galvanized by the energies of social enterprise. This chapter describes the difficulties that organizations had in morphing into fully fledged businesses and, in particular, the stresses that emerged between organizations forced to diversify and become accountable to different control mechanisms. It is suggested that these tensions are best understood as a form of neoliberal governance that determined some of the key ways organizations shaped themselves to appear fit and competitive in the changing marketplaces of the enterprise state.