Sustainability and governance in UK public interest companies (institutional perspective)

The British legal model of a social enterprise, a community interest company (CIC), operating since 2004, is conceptually based on the concept of “community interest”, which, however, is not defined in any way by the British legislator. The civil law principles of reasonableness, sanity and good faith that underlie the “community interest test” are able to substantiate the theoretical model, but, actually ignoring the opinion of the local community, are difficult to implement in practice. The British social enterprise, having priority social goals, directing “surplus” to them and its development, and not to maximizing profits, is moving closer to the concept of “people’s capitalism”. Unlike the Italian law of 1991, which focuses on the employment of socially vulnerable categories of the population and their provision of goods and services, the British law focuses on the market efficiency of social enterprises. Thus, the British CIC is a hybrid, not a fully commercial enterprise, but not a non-for-profit either. The British model is distinguished by the simplicity and accessibility of the procedure for creating and registering a CIC, similar to the procedure for establishing any limited liability company. Business entities themselves choose the status that suits them. To ensure sustainable development and management of British public interest companies, the law does not require special internal institutions, since sustainability is embedded in the ideology and status of these organizations.