Social Economy as a driver of environmental transition

• In Event: Social Economy and Local development initiatives

Abstract

Product-service systems (PSS) are defined as business models selling a service that a product provides without the need for the user to own the product itself (known examples of PSS are clothing libraries, care sharing or rental services). They are are characterized by “a system of products, services, support networks, and infrastructure designed to be competitive, meet customer needs, and have a lower environmental impact than traditional business models” (Mont, 2002, p. 239). PSS are believed to be one of the systems able to contribute to the challenges of the transition (Roman et al., 2023) needed to overcome the crises of this century. However, literature shows that, as organized by traditional for-profit businesses, PSS can be economically sustainable but do not always achieve their environmental promises (Vaileanu-Pau and Boutillier 2012).
This is why the aim of this paper is to to analyze whether PSS solutions supported by social enterprises are more sustainable than similar offers supported by conventional companies. Indeed, if PSS firms really wish to favor a transition towards more sustainability, they should adopt the concept of triple bottom line developed by Elkington (1998) that encompasses economic prosperity, social equity and environmental integrity. By nature, social economy organizations have to face trade-offs between their social impact and their financial sustainability (or at least their ability tobreak-even) (see Godfroid and Labie, 2023). This is the reason why considering social economy organizations as good candidates for implementing PSS seems reasonable as extending the existing trade-off by adding the integration of environmental goals may be possible.
Furthermore, in their paper, Roman et al. (2023) stress that one of the identified conditions to promote the potential for strong sustainability PSS is accessibility. In our societies, some people have no access to some basic goods (material deprivation). Therefore, by favoring the common use of assets, PSS could become an option for making those goods available to these people.
Social economy organizations have often been considered legitimate to provide goods and services that fulfil customers’ needs neither met by government nor by conventional firms. Could they do this through adequate PSS models? To what extent can PSS combined with the social economy address these material deprivations? What would be the goods/needs that these two combined sectors could cover?
To discuss it, we will first study the provision of medical and paramedical devices by the “Health Mutuals” (which are major actors of social economy in Belgium) to individual citizens. We will study the characteristics of those products to understand why they are mainly lent by those Mutuals. Based on that, we intend to infer what are the characteristics of a basic needs product that make it a good candidate for being delivered through a PSS set up by a social economy organization.

References

Elkington, J. (1998). Accounting for the triple bottom line. Measuring Business Excellence, 2(3), 18-22.
Godfroid, C., & Labie, M. The process of organizational identification in social enterprises: The role of coalitions. European Management Review, available online.
Mont, O. K. (2002). Clarifying the concept of product–service system. Journal of cleaner production, 10(3), 237-245.
Roman, P., Thiry, G., Muylaert, C., Ruwet, C., & Maréchal, K. (2023). Defining and identifying strongly sustainable product-service systems (SSPSS). Journal of Cleaner Production, 136295.
Vaileanu-Pau, I., Boutillier, S. (2012). Économie de la fonctionnalité. Une nouvelle synergie entre le territoire, la firme et le consommateur ? Innovations, 1(37), 95-125.

Authors

• Coralie Muylaert, UMONS

• Cécile Godfroid, UMONS

• Marc Labie, UMONS