Social Enterprise Models in Austria: a Contextual Approach to Understand an Ambiguous Concept

• In Event: Social Enterprises in Changing Welfare States

Abstract

Context and concepts

This contribution deals with contextual and conceptual issues about the emergence and development of social enterprises in Austria (Anastasiadis & Lang 2015). Prior it has to be said, that the international term SE is not frequently used in the Austrian context – neither in research nor in public and professional discourses. Instead, German versions are more common, such as Sozialwirtschaft (Social Economy) or Sozialintegrationsunternehmen (Social Integration Enterprises). Further a variety of international terms dominate national research debates which are somehow related to the SE concept, like non-profit-organisations (NPOs) or social entrepreneurs, whereby these notions are often used synonymously as it is the case in international discussions (Peattie & Morely 2008). Secondly there is still little existing literature and almost no comprehensive empirical data on the phenomenon of SE in Austria (Lehner 2011; Neumayr et al. 2007). Some groundwork on NPOs and social entrepreneurs in Austria has been done (e.g. Millner et al. 2013; Schneider & Maier 2013), although research on SE in Austria tends to focus on specific fields, like child care (Leichsenring 2001) or work integration (Gschöpf 2010) and previous attempts to map the SE sector in Austria remained fragmented and descriptive (European Commission 2014).

Methodology

Against this background, the paper examines existing SE-models in Austria in a more comprehensive way. Based on a systematic, explorative literature analysis (Tranfield et al. 2003) of about 140 sources, it explores in the first section the institutional context of the SE-debate in Austria from a historical perspective. This leads to a delineation of different SE-related concepts which currently exist in Austria. In line with the Social-Origins-Approach and its Civil-Society-Models (Salamon & Sokolowski 2010) it draws on specificities of the Austrian welfare regime both in different historical periods and in its current form. Furthermore, it highlights the links to the emergence and development of different forms of third sector organisations in general and SE practices and models, in particular.

Toward a typology of SE models in Austria

Based on this analysis, in the second section the paper proposes a typology of five main SE-models to be found in Austria at present: Traditional SE-models are community-led (1) and professional cooperatives (2) as well as non-profit and limited-profit associations and companies (3). Among younger SE-models, we find collective SE (4) and individually-driven social entrepreneurs (5). As an indication for the typology, cases will be sketched for each model. They reveal that SE-models in Austria tend to be strongly interlinked with public bodies in terms of external facilitation. On the one hand, this strengthens their capacity to effectively tackle community problems. On the other hand, however, it constantly threatens organisational autonomy and participatory governance of SE in Austria.

References:

Anastasiadis, M. & Lang, R. (2015): Social Enterprise Models in Austria: A contextual approach to understand an ambiguous concept. Working paper of the “International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM)” Project. (in print).
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Authors

• Maria Anastasiadis, University of Graz

• Richard Lang, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Institute for Innovation Management