Towards an International Typology of Social Enterprise Models

• In Event: Social Enterprise Models from Various Perspectives

Abstract

Background

We do argue that the SE field will gain much more in the future from empirical works than from additional and ambitious definition attempts. This is not to say field realities were not carefully observed nor analyzed so far. On the contrary, a great deal of conceptual and theoretical works have been illustrated by examples of social enterprises and widely taught, as “cases” represent a key teaching strategy in business schools. Nevertheless, case-studies do not bring much evidence about the relevance of definitions: they are precisely selected to illustrate the latter and they do not say much about all the other field realities that do not fall under the same umbrella. So, generally speaking, it can be stated that very few conceptual constructions were “tested” against or derived from wide empirical evidence.

Building upon existing typologies

In the first section of this paper, we survey some existing SE typologies based on in-depth observation of SE landscapes, which all bring about useful lenses to grasp SE diversity. Building especially on several typologies of social enterprise origins, traditions, purposes, trajectories and discourses in the United Kingdom (Spear et al. 2009, Teasdale, 20012, Gordon, 2015), we then try in an inductive way to identify SE profiles which are most often observed as well as convergences from which we extract three major “principles of interest” at work in the SE landscape: the principle of general interest, the principle of mutual interest and the principle of capital interest. In a more deductive way, we find support to such building blocks in “the economics rationale of the third sector” as developed by Gui (1991) who identifies “public benefit organizations” and “mutual benefit organizations” apart from capitalist firms.

A mapping tool to locate “logics of action” generating social enterprise models

Drawing a triangle with these three principles of interest as apexes, we suggest how logics of action can emerge from all parts of the triangle, i.e. all parts of the economy (the public sector, FPOs and the third sector) along trajectories identified in the triangle. On such a basis, we identify 4 major social enterprises models, some of them embracing a certain diversity of sub-types.

Four major models tested against classifications according to social mission, mix of resources and governance

We finally argue the diversity of SE models on which we shed light is particularly well informed by country contributions already made to the International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project which involve some 200 researchers from 50 countries. Indeed such contributions provide typologies of SE models in many countries, against which it is possible to test the relevance of our own general typology.

References

Gordon, M. (2015), A Typology of Social Enterprise “Traditions”, ICSEM Working papers, no 18.
Gui, B. (1991), The Economic Rationale for the Third Sector, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, vol. 62, No 4, 551-572
Spear, R., Cornforth, C. & Aiken, M. (2009), The governance challenges of social enterprises: evidence from a UK empirical study, Annals of Public & Co-operative Economics, Vol.80, No.2, pp.247-273.
Teasdale, S. (2012a) What’s in a name? Making sense of social enterprise discourses, Public Policy & Administration, 27(2), pp.99-119.

Authors

• Jacques Defourny, University of Liege

• Marthe Nyssens, Universite Catholique de Louvain