This book review presents “The Social Enterprise Zoo: A Guide for Perplexed Scholars, Entrepreneurs, Philanthropists, Leaders, Investors, and Policymakers”, edited by Dennis Young, Elizabeth Searing and Cassady Brewer and published by Edward Elgar in 2016. It does so by illustrating the strengths and vulnerabilities that can be spotted across the chapters of a book that will prove to be a foundational work in nonprofit and social innovation studies. Among its many achievements, two are most noteworthy: the proper and effective use of a biological analogy in a work of social science and, relatedly, a powerful and flexible framework for understanding the past, present, and future of social enterprises, that is, organizations attempting to blend social purpose and profit.

The Social Enterprise Zoo employs the metaphor of the zoo to gain a more comprehensive understanding of social enterprise – especially the diversity of its forms; the various ways it is organized in different socio-political environments; how different forms of enterprise behave, interact, and thrive; and what lessons can be drawn for the future development and study of organizations that seek to balance social or environmental impact with economic success. Recommended for students, researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs and managers of social purpose organizations.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This work has been funded by the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd in partnership with United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on SSE (UNTFSSE) The Encyclopedia of the Social and Solidarity Economy is a comprehensive reference text that explores how the social and solidarity economy (SSE) plays a significant role in creating and developing economic activities in alternative ways. In contrast to processes involving commodification, commercialisation, bureaucratisation and corporatisation, the SSE reasserts the place of ethics, social well-being and democratic decision-making in economic activities and governance. Identifying and analysing a myriad of issues and topics associated with the SSE, the Encyclopedia broadens the knowledge base of diverse actors of the SSE, including practitioners, activists and policymakers.

This book applies benefits theory to the financing of nonprofit and other social purpose organizations. Individual chapters are devoted to organizations primarily reliant on earned income, gifts, government support and investment income, respectively, as well as organizations that are highly diversified in their sources of operating support. The book is intended to guide managers and leaders towards finding the best mix of income sources for their organizations, to help educate future managers about resource development and to stimulate additional research on the financing of nonprofits and other forms of social enterprise.

Economics for Nonprofit Managers and Social Entrepreneurs shows how economics contributes to better managerial decisions on social matters. This second edition of the original economics text for nonprofit managers, adds risk analysis, game theory, and behavioral economics to the managerial tool kit, along with analysis at the margin, opportunity cost, elasticity of demand and supply, market power, and cost–benefit analysis, with numerous timely examples. This text is essential for nonprofit managers and social entrepreneurs, and of interest to all economics students.

In the past decades, social enterprise has been an emerging field of research. Its main frameworks have been provided by Occidental approaches. Mainly based on an organizational vision, they give little or no room to questions such as gender, race, colonialism, class, power relations and intertwined forms of inequality. However, a wide range of worldwide hidden, popular initiatives can be considered as another form of social enterprises based on solidarity, re-embedding the economy as well as broadening the political scope. This has been shown in a previous book: Civil Society, the Third Sector, and Social Enterprise: Governance and Democracy. Thus, to be more than a fashion or a fictitious panacea, the concept of social enterprise needs to be debated. Southern realities cannot be only understood through imported categories and outside modeled guidelines. This book engages a multicontinental and pluridisciplinary discussion in order to provide a pluralist theory of social enterprise. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics and students in the fields of social entrepreneurship, social innovation, development studies, management studies and social work.