Abstract:
Today the social enterprises field in Sri Lanka faces numerous issues and challenges. It is rarely can
find research about Social Enterprises in Sri Lanka. According to one amongst them, which had done
by British Council, the geographical spread over the country of social enterprises in Sri Lanka, they
are more clustered in the Western and Central provinces while they are less common in other
provinces due to unable to access facilities and support service. Accordingly there is a gap to identify
what the challenges are for the social enterprises which are in the provinces with the least number of
social enterprises and why female social entrepreneurs are showing a dissimilar number of
proportions within the urban area and non-urban area. In this study the researcher aimed the research
population as the social enterprises in Uva Province which the less number of social enterprises are
located, to map challenges of social enterprises and giving recommendations for further development
of the social enterprises in Sri Lanka. Qualitative research was done under a purposeful sampling
method by selecting the sample in accordance with the researcher‟s knowledge and satisfaction of
achieving the objective of the research during the data collection process and the sample size was ten
sample units of social enterprises in Uva Province. Through exploratory research, the data was
collected by direct interview method and semi-structured open-ended questions were developed base
on the research objectives of the study. In this study Thematic Analysis was used to analyze the data.
Findings were main six challenges as “Institutional and operational challenges, Policy making and
government-related challenges, the Governance structure related challenges, Locational and
situational challenges, Diversity based challenges and Social, educational, and public awareness
related challenges”, and more specific challenges for Uva province are “Locational and situational
challenges”, “Social educational and public awareness related challenges” and “Diversity based
challenges”. As the recommendations, an exact policy regulation framework for the social enterprises
in Sri Lanka is needed and the respectable parties should take actions to give solutions for the
development of the social enterprises in Sri Lanka.
Keywords: Social enterprises; Social entrepreneurship; Mapping challenges; Thematic analysis;
Diversity based challenges
