High Context-Low Context delivery avoiding the race to the bottom?

I suppose this is about aspiration.

In 1976, the anthropologist Edward T. Hall presented the concept of High &
Low Context culture; essentially, these terms refer to a culture's tendency to
use high context messages over low context messages in routine
communication, with High Context being exclusive language and Low
Context, less so. Move on 37 years and we can apply a similar principle to the
behavior and performance of effective and less effective social enterprise,
allowing us to think through what a high context, strong, vibrant social
enterprise movement might look like.

In an exclusive High Context world, social enterprise jobs and services would
be about people, well resourced, inclusive & equal, opportunity-centred,
responsible, micro in application, with an aspiration to grow, is outcome-
focused and all about improving and changing lives. High Context delivery
fits hand-in-glove with what social entrepreneurship is all about.

In contrast, a Low Context inclusive world, (the world we are all currently
being pushed towards - sometimes inadvertently by social enterprises
themselves), the provision of jobs and services is shaped by numbers, the
lowest cost, inequality, is more about chance, its unwieldy, manipulative, has
a macro focus, is process driven and continually searches for outputs. Think
about any current employment programme or the Transforming
Rehabilitation model that has just wiped out the Probation Service and the
Peterborough Social Impact Bond for a clear example of a current Low
Context delivery model.

Making a living and remaining true to the ideals of a High Context enterprise
is tough. It requires an organisational capacity that has within it, determined
governance, skilled staff, dedicated finance, understanding investors, great
service delivery, luck and no shortage of nerve. Its a hard sell to exist and
stay in this space when seemingly all around are chasing a Low Context,
whatever it takes culture trying to raise a pound to survive.

In this Low space, those with the public sector contracts have limited
inclination to adopt a High Context approach and will protect those
contracts at all costs. Then in the public service commissioning space, for
commissioners, its no longer about a problem solved, or even a problem
halved; at best, its about a problem shared. Thus, effectively they are only
moving the issues around. And here is the rub - there is a significant difference
between a service actually trying to solve social problems and one focused
on sharing them out. Sharing does no more than kick the problem down the
road only to be picked up again 3 contract years later.

As you read this, lets assume that you hold the view that there is nothing
wrong with this shared approach and that social enterprise should try to get a
piece of the action. With the shared approach, more organisations would get
a slice of the funding pie and more people would be reached by those
services provided by social organisations of some sort. Of course, there is
some logic here as generally, if there is more, it would typically be safe to
assume that things would be better! This is one option but what, if anything,
has this shared approach got to do with being entrepreneurial or socially
enterprising?

In a shared, low-context situation, services are offered with the promise of
further savings, devoid of true innovation. Invariably, this results in the loss of
jobs and the dumbing-down of social impact; Clients/customers are viewed
as target outputs rather than as individuals each deserving equality of
opportunity.

Surrounding the current social enterprise movement, social financiers and
consultants alike are making a good living out of largely trying to reshape the
public sector by replicating existing services with something cheaper. These
types of service are about volume over quality and have no capacity to
service debt but short-term debt finance is the order of the day. This is a Low
Context finance model that has little to do with improving peoples lives or
adding growth capacity to social enterprises. Rather, it has pretty much
everything to do with forcing the wrong money into a marketplace that is
not able to cope with the repayment terms.

You would think that forcing the wrong money into the marketplace would
be difficult to do and it is. Many social enterprises are waking up to the
realisation that what is on offer is, in fact, the wrong money. Yet the social
finance intermediaries still push their seemingly endless supply of short-term
debt into the marketplace and some social enterprises remain blinded by the
appeal of becoming a big service provider or the next scale up. These
enterprises think that they can expand their services with money that is not set
up to work for them, money they take from financiers, many of which do not
understand the needs social enterprise in the first place. This situation is a car
crash waiting to happen and it will happen sooner rather than later.

Together all of this is typical of an approach that encourages Low Context
service delivery throughout the social supply chain; offering enterprises the
wrong money, telling them to partner with others, to check their costs and
remain lean all in the face of inevitable competition. This approach
engenders the fear of losing to the competitor, rather than adding real value
to the chain. This is classic race to the bottom stuff Begging the question...
What happens when we get there?

This is not the role of social enterprise, where the survival of the service
deliverer (Low Context) takes precedent over the quality of the service (High
Context).

High Context delivery should be the holy grail of any social enterprise. At the
point of start up, if this is not your aspiration, then why set up in the first place?
As for those existing Low Context social enterprises, who are finding their only
route to survival is to be part of this race to the bottom, reconsider what it is
that you are doing and what value are you adding with your services, to that
which would have already been added anyway?

Robbie Davison Director - Can Cook CIC - 2014