Smart cities: A Case study and Delphi approach in understanding the role of Social Enterprise Business Models toward Integrated Public Transportation

There is an increasing focus on integrated transportation networks being the change agent for ‘smart city’ strategies to deliver social impact. Prior research has identified growing needs to explore the roles of procurement and governance in delivering social impact through ‘smart city’ solutions (Fassam et al., 2016). Developing integrated transport solutions whether urban or rural requires horizontal governance arrangements that facilitate collaboration between private/public/third sector stakeholders (Fassam et al., 2016). However, there remains a scareceness of research exploring the creation of such governance structures and who within these ‘smart city’ schemes should lead these transformations. This research seeks to fill this gap by utilising the concept of the social enterprise and entrepreneur as an agent of change in building social capital networks (Dufays and Hubrechts, 2014), leading to the creation of governance systems that facilitate cross sectoral partnership formation. In doing so, it builds on prior research that explores collaboration in public/third sector partnerships and the role that social enterprise play in leading multi-stakeholder collaborations that minimise the cultural differences inherent in public/private/third sector partnerships (Fassam et al 2015; Hazenberg and Hall, 2016). This research paper takes a qualitative approach through a case study of an integrated transport model (UK) and leverages a Delphi study to explore the degree of fit between current business models and needs of varying stakeholders in formulating a theoretical representation of how social enterprise business models demonstrate a new way forward for integrated transformation travel.