Interview guidelines
How is the ESE organised?
1. Can you tell me about the company and how it was started? (age group, educational background, work background?)
2. What is your product? Do you trade it?
3. How has your product been received in the market? Did you create a new market? (hit a trend or found a new niche)
4. What is the role of consumer/user demand?
5. How do you find an acceptable price for your product?
6. How big is the staff, paid vs. voluntary?
7. How are you funded? (beginning and now)
8. Have you received any financial or other types of support from somewhere? (human, financial etc.) Do you have external investors that require return on investment?
9. What legal form has the SE taken?
10. Why did you choose this form? Did you consider the CIC model?
11. What are the benefits to being organized the way you are? What are the risks? (legitimacy, identity) 12. Do you actively communicate your form/model? (marketing, investors, public)
13. Has being a …. given you access to funding you otherwise couldn’t have gotten?
14. How is the legal model supporting /hindering the realization of aims? (L) very supportive, somewhat supportive, not very, not at all
15. If you didn’t use this model, what would have been the alternative choice?
What is the business model? (defined as conceptual framework for value creation, delivering something that is attractive to customers and earning money to ensure survival)
16. Which environmental challenges are you trying to address?
17. What is your approach to solve this/these issues?
18. How have you integrated environmental aims into the structure and culture of the company?
19. Do you measure your impact? If so, how?
20. What are your barriers in working with environmental issues?
21. Do you view yourself as different to a typical business? What is a sustainable enterprise to you?
22. Are you challenging current ways of doing business within your sector?
23. What characterizes your competitors? Who are they?
24. What would need to change (societal, political) to make things easier for you / to be able to compete with non-sustainable competitors?
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25. Are there activities or business opportunities that are avoided, because they are not considered responsible?
26. Are you responding to a community need or a market opportunity?
27. Are you more mission driven versus more market driven?
28. How important is profit to you? (L) Little importance 1-5 great importance 29. How do you balance social/environmental and commercial aims?
30. Have you experienced goal conflicts between profit making and society interest? (Explain. Examples.) 31. How are such conflicts addressed?
32. Do you perceive there to be a community interest/profit trade-off? (L) Not at all, Very little, Somewhat, To a great extent
33. How would you describe the general attitude towards profit maximization in your sector?
34. Have you experienced a situation where you wanted to achieve more (socially, ecologically economic) but couldn’t? Why?
35. What are your thoughts on upscaling and your status 5 years from now?
36. Do you know other ESE’s that I could interview?
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