Abstract
The quest for a widely accepted definition of social enterprise (SE) has been a central issue in the last two decades. However, it only seems feasible today to identify a few criteria that were most debated: the specific role of individual social entrepreneurs, the place of social innovation, the search for market income and the issue of governance. The arena of conceptualization efforts should now be fed with more contributions starting from bottom-up approaches built upon a hypothesis that could be termed “the impossibility of a unified definition”. In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework combining principles of interest (mutual, general and capital interest) and resource mixes to identify institutional trajectories generating four major SE models. We then show that all four SE models may address the actual diversity of SE’s social missions. Finally, we suggest that such social missions may be enhanced differently depending on the respective governance mechanisms.
Résumé
La quête d’une définition largement acceptée de la notion d’entreprise sociale constitue, depuis deux décennies, un enjeu central. Cependant, tout ce qu’il semble possible de faire à l’heure actuelle est d’identifier les quelques critères qui ont fait l’objet du plus grand nombre de travaux et de débats : le rôle spécifique des entrepreneurs sociaux individuels, la place de l’innovation sociale, la quête de ressources marchandes et la question de la gouvernance. Le champ des efforts de conceptualisation doit maintenant être alimenté par davantage de contributions s’appuyant sur des approches « bottom-up », construites sur la base d’une hypothèse que l’on pourrait désigner comme « l’impossibilité d’une définition unifiée ». Dans le présent article, nous élaborons un cadre théorique combinant différents principes d’intérêts (mutuel, général et capitaliste) et différentes combinaisons de ressources pour identifier des trajectoires institutionnelles générant quatre principaux modèles d’entreprise sociale. Nous montrons ensuite que ces quatre modèles peuvent couvrir la diversité effective des missions sociales desdites entreprises. Nous suggérons enfin que ces missions sociales pourraient être plus ou moins renforcées en fonction des mécanismes de gouvernance adoptés par les entreprises sociales.
Zusammenfassung
Die Suche nach einer weitgehend akzeptierten Definition von Sozialunternehmen ist ein zentrales Thema. Es erscheint heute nur angebracht, einige der am häufigsten diskutierten Kriterien zu identifizieren: die spezifische Rolle einzelner Sozialunternehmer, den Ort der sozialen Innovation, das Streben nach Markteinnahmen und das Problem der Steuerung. Die Bemühungen zur Konzeptualisierung sollten nun mit weiteren Beiträgen ergänzt werden, ausgehend von Bottom-up-Ansätzen, die auf einer Hypothese beruhen, welche als „die Unmöglichkeit einer einheitlichen Definition“bezeichnet werden könnte. In diesem Beitrag entwickeln wir ein theoretisches Rahmenwerk, das die Grundsätze des Interesse (beiderseitiges, allgemeines und kapitales Interesse) und Ressourcenmixe miteinander verknüpft, um die institutionellen Entwicklungen zu identifizieren, aus denen vier wesentliche Modelle des Sozialunternehmens hervorgehen. Anschließend zeigen wir, dass alle vier Modelle auf die tatsächliche Diversität der sozialen Missionen der Sozialunternehmen eingehen können. Letztendlich schlagen wir vor, dass diese sozialen Missionen abhängig von den entsprechenden Steuerungsmechanismen unterschiedlich ausgeweitet werden können.
Resumen
La búsqueda de una definición ampliamente aceptada de la empresa social ha sido una cuestión central. Sólo parece factible en la actualidad identificar algunos criterios que fueron muy debatidos: el papel específico de los emprendedores sociales individuales; el lugar de la innovación social, la búsqueda de ingresos de mercado y la cuestión de la gobernanza. El campo de los esfuerzos de conceptualización debe ser alimentado ahora con más contribuciones comenzando con enfoques de abajo-arriba basados en una hipótesis que podría ser calificada como “la imposibilidad de una definición unificada”. En el presente documento, desarrollamos un marco teórico que combina los principios de interés (interés mutuo, general y del capital) y las mezclas de recursos para identificar trayectorias institucionales que generan cuatro modelos de empresa social (SE, por sus siglas en inglés) principales. Después mostramos que los cuatro modelos de SE pueden abordar la diversidad real de las misiones sociales de la SE. Finalmente, sugerimos que dichas misiones sociales pueden ser mejoradas de manera diferente dependiendo de los mecanismos de gobernanza respectivos.
Chinese
对普遍认可的社会企业定义的探索成为中心问题。当前,似乎仅可确定一些最具争议的标准:单个社会企业家的特定角色;社会创新的位置,市场收入的研究和治理问题。现在,应为概念化工作领域提供更多贡献,从自下而上的方法开始,基于“无法获得统一定义”的假设。在本文中,我们开发了理论框架,其中组合了相关原则(共同、一般和资本利益)和资源,确定生成四种主要SE模式的机构轨迹。然后,我们显示所有四个SE模式都可能针对SE社会使命的实际多样性。最后,根据各自政府机制的不同,我们认为此类社会使命可能得到不同的增强。
Arabic
من المعايير التي نوقشت أكثر من غيرها: الدور المحدد لأصحاب المشاريع الاجتماعية الفردية؛ مكان الإبتكار الإجتماعي، البحث عن دخل السوق التجاري ومشكلة الحكم. ينبغي الآن أن تتغذى ساحة جهود وضع المفاهيم بمزيد من المساهمات بدءا"
إطار نظري يجمع بين أصل الفائدة (المتبادلة ، العامة ورأسمال الفائدة) ومزج الموارد لتحديد المسارات المؤسسية لإنتاج أربعة نماذج مشاريع إجتماعية (SE) رئيسية. بعد ذلك، نبين أن جميع نماذج المشاريع الإجتماعة (SE) الأربعة قد يعالج التنوع الفعلي للمهمات الإجتماعية الخاصة بالمشاريع الإجتماعية (SE). أخيرا"، نقترح أنه يمكن تعزيز هذه المهمات الإجتماعية بشكل مختلف تبعا" لآليات الحكم المعنية.
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Notes
Investors are those who hold shares and are mainly or exclusively interested in the overall return of this capital ownership. Extending such a rationale, an individual owner may also be seen as an investor holding both types of rights.
In such case, members consider the production activity as the very raison d’être of the organization. This is also true for members of cooperatives: although they generally buy one or some capital shares to become members, they are not primarily interested in the return on such capital (which is incidentally quite limited in several ways).
In such a perspective, all public (state) organizations and institutions are also typically public benefit entities, but they form the public sector, not the third sector.
Most enterprises of all types do produce positive externalities, but for-profit firms do not generally internalize them, i.e. do not integrate them in their explicit goals, nor in their accounting system and financial statements.
http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles. Accessed January 2016.
As noted above (“Three Principles of Interest” section), family businesses are among those who balance financial and non-financial goals (Zellweger et al. 2013).
A few other social business initiatives have been launched by an investment fund named “Danone Communities”. The “Global Social Business Summit”, which is organized yearly, seeks to promote this model or variations of it, especially among leaders of multinational corporations who may, for example, launch partnerships with NGOs that bring about knowledge of local conditions and needs as well as legitimacy to address social challenges.
Hybrids do form a last category of animals in the “social enterprise zoo” described by Young and Lecy (2014). It seems to us that putting together all hybrids resulting from combinations between the various “species” reveals limitations of this metaphor.
Let us note that several works have already argued that social innovation entails a “participatory governance” pillar or some empowerment of people trying to fulfil their needs, thereby suggesting that organizations like associations and cooperatives may prove to be among the best vectors of social innovation (Moulaert et al. 2013). Along such lines, we did look at the relations between social innovation and the various social enterprise schools of thought (Defourny and Nyssens 2013).
In Portuguese “social solidarity cooperatives”, Spanish “social initiative cooperatives” and Polish “social cooperatives”, any distribution of profit is forbidden. Distribution of profit is strongly limited in Italian “social cooperatives” and in French “collective interest cooperative companies”. All these laws require some form of asset lock.
A cap can limit the proportion of distributed profits or/and the dividend payable on the shares.
Brakman Reiser adds: “Moreover, how can a regulator (or any enforcement mechanism) police the operations of an enterprise committed to two goals that will often conflict? Where social enterprise enthusiasts see the value in blending mission, architects of a regulatory framework see a muddle” (Brakman Reiser 2014: 233). “Perhaps an L3C member will buy in with the goal of achieving both social and financial gains from her/his investment. If, over time, however, the L3C’s managers err on the side of more financial gains, is it realistic to believe that most investors will sue to enforce its charitable and educational goals?” (Brakman Reiser 2014: 234).
It is the case for the Italian “social cooperative”, the Portuguese “social solidarity cooperative”, the Spanish “social initiative cooperative” and the French “collective interest cooperative society”. In the Belgian “social purpose company”, no single person can have more than one-tenth of the total number of votes linked to the shares being represented. The Belgian social purpose company also provides for procedures allowing each employee to participate in the enterprise’s governance through the ownership of capital shares.
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Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at various meetings related to the “International Comparative Social Enterprise Models” (ICSEM) Project in Albania, Belgium, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Poland, South Korea and Switzerland as well as at the 5th EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise (Helsinki, July 2015), at the 7th International Social Innovation Research Conference (York, September 2015) and at the 12th International Conference of ISTR (Stockholm, June 2016). The authors gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions made by the many participants to these events, especially S. Cornée, B. Huybrechts, A. Périlleux, M. Gawell, R. Dudley-Duff and D. Young.
This research has been carried out with the support of an Interuniversity Attraction Pole funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office under the title “If not for profit, for what? And how?”
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Defourny, J., Nyssens, M. Fundamentals for an International Typology of Social Enterprise Models. Voluntas 28, 2469–2497 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-017-9884-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-017-9884-7