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This thesis explores Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI) as an alternative vehicle for the supply of debt finance to financially excluded enterprises. CDFIs are part of a broader approach to addressing financial exclusion that is experienced by commercial and social enterprises in the US and UK. The thesis explores US and UK CDFI lending processes to develop an understanding of how financial and social objectives are balanced in the lending process and the ways in which CDFIs become embedded in local financial and business support networks. The analysis is based upon detailed comparative research of CDFIs located in the US and the UK; interviews were undertaken with CDFIs, their clients and a quantitative analysis of a CDFIs loan portfolio was undertaken. The research concludes that CDFIs are complex dynamic organizations as they have to balance a double or triple bottom line which has the potential to undermine the firm’s long term survival or mission. The danger is that over time a CDFI will reduce its exposure to risk and become more like a mainstream bank. The tensions with the CDFI business model implies that they will only ever provide a partial solution to the enterprise finance gap.

This PhD thesis considers the much researched, but little understood relationship between intellectual property rights (IPRs) and foreign direct investment (FDI). It employs a mixed methodology research design to answer the main research question, namely: 'How does the perception of intellectual property rights protection in China influence the foreign direct investment decisions of UK multi-national enterprises'. It examines aggregate data drawn from the FAME database, explores business decisions through an extensive survey of 205 senior executives of UK MNEs and draws specific understanding of the phenomenon through a series of nine follow-up interviews with executives. The paradox of China, with a poor reputation for IPRs, receiving large amounts of global FDI acts as a backdrop to this research. This research uses John Dunning's (1977) OLI framework to build its conceptual framework. The methodology employed allows for the disaggregation of companies and of FDI following the lead of Edwin Mansfield (1994) but, additionally, extends the taxonomy to services companies and to companies that both deliver services and manufacture products. This research has demonstrated that China's IPR system (including laws, regulatory system and enforcement) does impact the FDI decisions of UK MNEs. Evidence produced demonstrates that the perception of weak IPRs in China leads many companies to invest in lower quality FDI, invest with older technology or to choose not to invest in China. Additionally, the evidence produced shows that the mode of investment companies choose is impacted with wholly-foreign-owned entities preferred to joint ventures as a result of weaker IPRs. In addition, this research provides empirical evidence of internal company strategies to enable FDI in R&D facilities in countries with weaker IPRs, safely. The main contributions to knowledge of this thesis lie in the deeper understanding, through robust evidence, of the nature and behaviour of UK MNEs when operating in a country with weak IPRs. The thesis highlights the requirement to disaggregate companies and type of FDI when considering the FDI/IPR nexus and that a failure to do so may be the reason for previously mixed findings and a resulting unclear understanding of the IPR-FDI relationship in the existing literature. The key implications for policymakers flowing from this thesis are that better IPRs will improve the quantum and quality of FDI investments.

This thesis examines a newly emergent space in the economy: socially invested adult social care (SIASC). Adult social care in the UK is currently under substantial financial duress, with the problems that the sector faces being compounded by the increasing withdrawal or collapse of privately funded provision and cuts to local authority budgets. It is against this backdrop that the social investment sector has started to offer the adult social care sector new sources of finance and provision, simultaneously providing social investors with a new space within which they can generate financial returns and create a social benefit. This research identifies and conceptualises social investment in adult social care as a form of financialisation. It is argued that through social investment in adult social care, the processes of financialisation have entered further the realm of the third sector and communities, and that SIASC is another example of the financialisation of social reproduction (in comparison to, for instance, housing, education and utilities). The thesis investigates and develops our understanding of this emergent form of financialisation, its processes, innovations, complexities and nuances. Drawing on existing literature on financialisation, the marketisation of the third sector, and new forms of (social) investment, (social) business and (social) economic practice, a conceptual framework for understanding financialised social reproduction is generated. Thereafter, the thesis investigates this conceptual framework in the case of the emergence of socially invested adult social care. Empirically, the thesis begins by presenting an institutional map of socially invested adult social care, documenting how this particular space of social reproduction has been constructed and what elements are present. Given this map, a deeper interrogation of socially invested adult social care and its processes of financialisation is conducted through three case studies. Each case describes a model of care provision, and an emergent example of the financialisation of social reproduction. The first example is a model of financialised social reproduction based on a co-operative model; the second is an example of a social impact bond approach and the third model of financialised social reproduction is based on legal duties and increased financial obligations. The findings portray a varied, at times complex and nuanced process of financialisation of adult social care. This process includes, for example, new forms of investment product, the development of a range of new, socially orientated, business models and continued and expanded reliance on volunteer labour. Social investment financialisation is found to have driven new and innovative forms of adult social care provision, expanded the capacity of the care sector in terms of finance and resource and, for example, instigated organisational change throughout the procurement process - whilst transferring welfare responsibilities from the state to communities and individuals through a number of approaches and variegations. The result is the creation of a complex financial and social architecture, capable of acting in support of the care sector, whilst expanding and deepening the scope of financialisation practices into the sphere of social reproduction. Given the limited scale, scope and nature of socially invested adult social care, it is highly unlikely that it can provide a sector wide solution to 'the crisis of adult social care' but, arguably, it can offer a partial 'fix' for the sector or additional support in a time of crisis. Social investment then, is both pushing financialisation toward new areas of the economy, whilst providing new forms of support and new services in the adult social care sector.