The concepts of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship are rapidly attracting increased attention in academic spheres and from policy-makers, as well as field workers who are setting up new initiatives or reshaping their organizations. These concepts are perceived as defining innovative and dynamic responses to major global challenges in today’s societies. The debate about social enterprise is now world-wide, with lively exchanges between American and European scholars. However, the research and landscapes still differ significantly in different regions, and diversity also exists within specific regions such as Europe. This book presents the most comprehensive set of contributions reflecting the European-wide debate, but with frequent connections to developments in other parts of the world. This book is a result of work carried out by members of the EMES International Research Network, which is a pioneer in this field. Social Enterprise and the Third Sector will appeal to all researchers who focus on the third sector, social economy and social enterprise, to MBA and postgraduate students, as well as to intellectual social enterprise leaders and practitioners. It will soon become a key reference for all those who want to explore the full richness of these concepts and follow this important academic debate.

If the twentieth century was only focused on the complementarity and the opposition of market and state, the twenty-first century has now to deal with the prominence of the third sector, the emergence of social enterprises and other solidarity hybrid forms. The concept of civil society organisations (CSOs) spans this diversity and addresses this new complexity. The first part of the book highlights the organizational dimensions of CSOs and analyses the growing role of management models and their limits. Too often, the study of CSO governance has been centered on the role of the board and has not sufficiently taken into account the different types of accountability environments. Thus, the conversation about CSO governance rises to the level of networks rather than simple organizations per se, and the role of these networks in setting the agenda in a democratic society. In this perspective, the second part emphasizes the institutional dimensions of CSO governance by opening new avenues on democracy. First, the work of Ostrom about governing the commons provides us new insights to think community self-governance. Second, the work of Habermas and Fraser opens the question of deliberative governance and the role of public sphere to enlarge our vision of CSO governance. Third, the concepts of substantive rationality and economy proposed respectively by Ramos and Polanyi reframe the context in which the question can be addressed. Lastly, this book argues for a stronger intercultural approach useful for the renewal of paradigms in CSOs research. This book has for objective to present a unique collective work in bringing together 33 authors coming from 11 countries to share perpectives on civil society governance and will be of interest to an international audience of researchers and policy-makers.

In one of its previous books, the EMES European Research Network traced the most significant developments in 'social entrepreneurship' emerging inside the third sector in Europe. Building upon that seminal work, this volume presents the results of an extensive research project carried out over a four-year period of a comparative analysis of 160 social enterprises across eleven EU countries. It breaks new ground in both its articulation of multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks and its rigorous analysis of empirical evidence based on a homogenized data collection methodology. Looking at work intergration, it is structured around a number of key themes (multiple goals and multiple stakeholders, multiple resources, trajectories of workers, public policies) developed through a transversal European analysis, and is illustrated with short country experiences that reflect the diversity of welfare models across Europe. With contributions from an impressive list of academics, all members of the EMES European Research Network, this rich follow-up volume to The Emergence of Social Enterprise is essential reading for academics, researchers and students in the fields of the third sector and social policies.

This book investigates the remarkable growth of the 'third sector', focusing on social enterprises, their characteristics, their contribution and their future prospects.

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.

The book examines the management of social purpose driven organizations in an Asian context, using the case study approach. It looks at these organizations during a period of major changes in the regulatory and governance environment for charities in Singapore. The focus is on how these changes impact the organizational and management issues confronting several charities and volunteer welfare organizations, an arts enterprise, a co-operative and a non-governmental organization in international disaster relief. Although diverse, the common denominator among these organizations is their commitment to a core social purpose. Issues examined include: organizational restructuring, crisis management, organizational change management, social entrepreneurship and organizational sustainability. The book adopts a systemic perspective in examining the challenges of managing organizations that are neither state-owned nor private enterprises, and in particular, the interrelationships between contexts, actions and outcomes and their impact on the organizations, their stakeholders and external environments.

The first comparative look at how social enterprise is shaped by local conditions worldwide