Re-embedding embeddedness: what is the role of social enterprise in promoting democracy and protecting social rights?

Abstract

Purpose In today’s “market society” almost every aspect of the everyday lives is shaped by market forces. In this essay, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the potential role of social enterprise as one means of re-embedding the economy into society to ensure the economy works for people, rather than the other way around. Design/methodology/approach This is primarily a conceptual paper: a provocation. Findings The authors argue that to work as an embedding force, social enterprise needs to ensure both reciprocity and market exchange while acting in a way that attempts to compensate for the retreat of the state through providing public services and promoting collective decision-making and public deliberation. Originality/value Drawing upon the work of Karl Polanyi to conceptualise social enterprise as an “alternative” economic actor within a plural economic system, the authors contribute to on-going debates about social enterprise as an alternative way of organising markets and society. The authors highlight the challenges involved in achieving such a vision and suggest ways these might be overcome.

Embedding circularity: Theorizing the social economy, its potential, and its challenges

“…Not only does the organization depend on cooperation with other organizations-that is, the supplies of computers and phones-but effective cooperation for ecological and social goals depends on the government as a further player, not only for the regulatory status but also for supporting the work insertion program. Consistent with the Polanyian political embedding, we see an important supporting role for the state in the social economy embedding of circularity (Roy et al, 2021).…”

Contesting Ownership: Employee-Ownership, Staff Participation in the English Care Sector

“…In this third strand we explore how ownership has been debated within different social science disciplines as well as highlighting recent New Cooperativism debates (Roy, Dey and Teasdale, 2021). Crucially, we find questions about who owns what, why and for what purposes are (and have always been) important to how we organise work.…”

“…Understanding the hidden critical origins of the recent New Cooperativism debates is essential for Ridley-Duff and Bull (2019), Roy, Dey and Teasdale, (2021), and Vieta and Lionais (2022). For them social forms of ownership have always offered radical alternatives to managerialism by enfranchising both labour, communities and users.…”

“…In earlier studies Ridley-Duff and Southcombe (2012) also made an important distinction between philanthropic social aims which are tested by the amount of social benefits achieved; and the claim to socialise work through transforming ownermanager-labour relationships and democratising workplaces. Socialising work (or re-embedding work locally in a Polanyian sense) is not merely about increasing staff input into corporate decisions and/or producing surpluses for social causes, but about increasing staff autonomy, decreasing organisational inequality, encouraging non-market forms of accountability and the wider societal context (Roy et al, 2021). Moreover, for Varman and Chakrabarti (2004) continuous and ongoing prefigurative debates about values and priorities are not just aspects of employee-ownership they are its essential characteristic.…”

Multiple entrepreneurial ecosystems? Worker cooperative development in Toronto and Montréal

“…Hall and Soskice, 2001) we might also expect there to be significant variegation across different Canadian city regions in the degree and manner of WC ecosystems’ subordination to the capitalist EE, in ways which belie a coherent notion of a nationally scaled LME. Francophone Montréal, for example, has long maintained more robust social democratic mores which manifest in more supportive ecosystem policies for “institutional logics” of entrepreneurial alterity (Bouchard, 2014; Roy et al, 2021). Toronto, reflecting Ontario's Anglo-American nature, is perceived as less hospitable to such forms (Heneberry and LaForest, 2011).…”