Social enterprises and stakeholder’s views regarding collaboration with commercial enterprises in the provision of eye care services in Kenya

Purpose The burden of uncorrected refractive error warrants a team approach and strengthened partnership across all sectors engaged in the delivery of refractive error services. However, in low-income countries such as Kenya, commercial entrepreneurship still dominates the optical industry, with social enterprises remaining unrecognized. Therefore, this study aims to explore social enterprises and stakeholder’s views on collaboration with commercial enterprises in the provision of eye care services in Kenya. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted an exploratory case study design. The participants included the Eye Rafiki, which is a programme supported by the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation to train competitively recruited community members as Eye Rafikis on the basics of refraction. The beneficiaries of refractive error services from activities of the Eye Rafikis were also included. The participants were recruited through purposive sampling, with interviews conducted through telephonic calls with the participants. The interviews comprised semi-structured questions on aspects around the need for collaboration between sectors engaged in eye care delivery in Kenya. Thematic analysis for qualitative data was carried out by categorizing the codes into categories using NVivo Software (version 11) and themes based on the semantic meaning of the codes. The results were presented in the form of descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings The preference for social enterprises as standalone was expressed by 63.5% (n = 428) of the beneficiaries and 3.6% (n = 4) of the Eye Rafikis. The preference for social enterprises that are standalone by the Eye Rafikis and the beneficiaries yielded two themes, namely, benefits and goals and interest. The majority of the Eye Rafikis (96.4%; n = 108) had the preference for a collaboration between social and commercial enterprises. The justifications put forth for the preference of a collaboration between social and commercial enterprises by the participants yielded three themes, namely, sustainability, human resource and conflict of interest. Originality/value The current dominant independent operation approach by commercial and social enterprises may not sufficiently address uncorrected refractive error. As a result, collaboration between the enterprises is desirable to synergize the achievement of effective refractive error coverage in Kenya. Even though social enterprises are positive about collaboration with commercial enterprises, evidence should be generated on the perspectives of commercial enterprises on such collaboration.