A Comparative Study of Legal Forms for Social Enterprises in the UK and Thailand

Abstract

This thesis studies legal forms for social enterprises in the UK and Thailand. The reason for the focus on these two countries is that the recent development of social enterprise in Thailand has been significantly influenced by the UK. I will show how a legal form specifically designed to suit the nature of social enterprise is important to its operation as well as the fostering of the social enterprise sector. Given this importance of such a legal form, and its unavailability in Thailand, a question arises: does the country need such a specially designed legal form? My argument in favour of its need runs as follows. Although the UK and Thailand rely on several legal forms, the Thai social enterprise sector, unlike its UK counterpart, still does not enjoy the benefits and advantages of a legal form like the Community Interest Company (CIC), which is devoted to the social enterprise by being purportedly designed specifically with its needs in mind. The Thai social enterprise sector’s reliance on the existing traditional legal structures has been found to suffer from serious limits: not only do these legal forms not facilitate the functioning of social enterprises, but the unavailability of a specialised legal structure becomes a disincentive to social entrepreneurship. A legal blueprint designed to suit the nature of social enterprise has thus been proposed to meet Thailand’s need. To establish its practical relevance, the blueprint has been used to evaluate the CIC and the legal forms adopted by social enterprises in Thailand. On the basis of the results of this evaluation it has been used as a model for the development of a specialised legal form for social enterprises in Thailand.