Conceptions of Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship in Europe and the United States: Convergences and Divergences

Abstract

The concepts of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship are making amazing breakthroughs in EU countries and the United States. Until recently, the debates on both sides of the Atlantic have taken place in parallel trajectories with few connections among them. In the first part of the paper, we describe the European and US historical landscapes in which those concepts took root. In the second part, we analyse how the various conceptualizations have evolved. This analysis paves the way for the third part, in which we highlight the conceptual convergences and divergences among regions as well as within the US and European landscapes.

The International Growth of a Social Business: A Case Study

“…The importance of terminology would be to decrease the boundaries between sectors "socioenvironmental businesses" and "socioenvironmental entreprenership" have also been used to emphasize the need to incorporate the environmental dimension to solutions proposed by this type of business (Defourny & Nyssens, 2010;Fischer & Comini, 2012;Haigh & Hoffman, 2012. Improving living conditions, according to scholars such as Prahalad and Hart (2002), takes place through the granting of access to any goods and services that were previously available only to privileged upper strata.…”

“…Much of the existing literature falls into one of three main lines of investigation of social businesses (Young, 2007): the European perspective, born from the Social Economy tradition (associations and cooperatives), strongly encourages businesses to carry out public duties; the North American view sees social businesses as businesses that use market logic to try to solve social problems; a third current, proposed by researchers from emerging countries, emphasizes business initiatives aimed at reducing poverty and transforming the social conditions of marginalized individuals. (Comini & Teodósio, 2012;Defourny & Nyssens, 2010;Kerlin, 2006Kerlin, , 2013Young & Lecy, 2012).…”

Trust, Social Capital, and the Coordination of Relationships Between the Members of Cooperatives: A Comparison Between Member-Focused Cooperatives and Third-Party-Focused Cooperatives

“…Thus, this article contributes to the ongoing discussion on the theoretical conceptualization of both cooperatives and social enterprises (Borzaga and Tortia 2006;Defourny and Nyssens 2010;Kerlin 2006;Poledrini 2015;Valentinov 2013;Young and Lecy 2014). Previous work has shown that neo-institutional economic theory, although widely applied in nonprofit studies, can neither adequately explain the existence of traditional, nor third-party-focused cooperatives as a type of social enterprise (Borzaga and Defourny 2001;Laville and Nyssens 2001;Dart 2004).…”

Teaching ‘Proper’ Drinking?: Clubs and pubs in Indigenous Australia

“…A social enterprise is a market-oriented economic activity that serves a social goal, although, as Defourny and Nyssens (2010) pointed out, the definition of a social enterprise varies between countries. Social enterprises are generally defined as businesses that have social aims, such as local employment; are usually based on a commitment to build local capacity; and are answerable to their members for their social and economic effect.…”

“…In Australia and overseas, enterprises such as these have discovered that identifying and promoting themselves as being owned by the Indigenous community can be an effective marketing technique. The Crossing Inn is not a community-owned hotel in the 'classic' Gothenburg sense, nor is it a social enterprise of the kind discussed by researchers such as Defourny and Nyssens (2010). A social enterprise is generally understood as a market-oriented economic activity that serves a social goal.…”