ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

	Conference Homepage
	Abstracts

Social enterprise and social inclusion: social enterprise in the sphere of work integration
by
Isabel Vidal
University of Barcelona

Introduction During the last twenty-five years, we have witnessed a boom in the third sector - socio-economic initiatives that do not belong to the conventional private sector nor to the public sector. They are voluntary initiatives by a group of ordinary people who, faced with unsatisfied demand as a consequence of the negative externalities generated by an economic crisis or as a result of the difficulties of the welfare state, create a not for profit organisation that attempt to develop activities that allow them to meet this unsatisfied demand. They use a variety of legal forms and often represent new expressions of organised civil society. The importance of third sector or social economy organisations has also been linked with the strong development of the welfare state and to its externalisation model for service provision through contracting.

Objective: One sphere of activity where social enterprises are most active is the training and absorption into employment of persons excluded from the labour market. These work integration social enterprises have as a major objective to help poorly qualified unemployed people, who are at risk of permanent exclusion from the labour market, back into work and society in general through a productive activity. The central objective of this paper is to analyse the socio-economic performance of work integration social enterprises.

Theoretical Approach: In this paper, we will focus our attention on a particular profile from within this set of organisations belonging to the third sector or to the social economy: social enterprises (Borzaga, Defourny (editors) (2001)).

The EMES (the Emergence of Social Enterprise, www.emes.net) researchers network understands the term social enterprise to mean that activity which fulfils, in whole or in part, any of the two sets of undertakings, in relation to its economic and social aspects.

In relation to the economic aspect, five characteristics allow a definition of its business dynamics:

- Continued economic activity in goods and services: social enterprises are directly and continuously involved in the production of goods and/or services and this represents one of the main reasons for their existence.

- High degree of autonomy: social enterprises are created voluntarily by a group of people and are run by them as independent entities. These are enterprises which may depend upon public grants although they are not directly or indirectly run by public or other institutions (federations, private companies...).

- Significant level of risk: the development group that constitutes a social enterprise assumes, wholly or partially, the risk for the initiative. Its financial viability depends on the efforts of its members and workers to guarantee sufficient resources.

- Enterprises that are market-orientated: an important or growing part of the business income comes from the market or contractual deals with the public authorities.

- A minimum number of workers: social enterprises combine monetary resources with non-monetary resources. They have a minimum number of workers.

Five undertakings are proposed from the social aspect: - An explicit objective of benefits to the community: one of the main objectives of social enterprises is to serve the community or a specific group of people. In this sense, one of the characteristics of social enterprises is the desire to promote a sense of social responsibility at the local level.

- An initiative created by a group of ordinary people: they are the product of activities of groups of people belonging to a community or people who share certain needs or aims and who want to contribute in one way or another.

- Power is not based on capital ownership: generally speaking, this means the principle of “one person, one vote” or as a minimum that the right to vote, is not dependent on holding shares in the enterprise.

- Nature of participation, which involves those groups of people affected by the activity: the representation and participation of clients/consumers on the board of directors and a democratic management are important characteristics of social enterprises.

- Limited distribution of profits: social enterprises not only include organisations characterised by the restriction that profits are not to be distributed, but also organisations that may only distribute profits up to a set limit, or those whose company statues exclude them from a culture of maximising profits.

Description: A first key objective of this paper is to capture and analyse the very specific kind of the resources used by social enterprises, the origin, the nature, (market, state or community) and the specific mix of resources. The second objective is to analyse the objectives of these social enterprises and their benefits for the excluded workers (monetary and non monetary benefits including quality and duration of employment) i.e. individual benefits on the one hand and, on the other, those for the community, i.e. collective benefits (as the enhancing in social capital, contributions to equity issues on the labour market…).

The paper plans to undertake analysis of a sample of about 15 work integration social enterprises around Spain. This document relates to the second report of the Spanish case of work integration enterprises belonging to the European project PERSE: the socio-economic performance of Social Enterprises in the field of work integration. This is an EMES network project financed by the Research Programme of DG XII at the European Commission. 11 partners from EU countries belong this network Methodology The empirical work is comprised of two phases: First phase: sending out 3 questionnaires to 15 companies. The questionnaires are designed to assess: a) multiple objectives and social capital within companies, b) finance sources and c) individual benefits for workers who are difficult to employ. As a corollary to these three questions, there is an in-depth interview with the directors from three of the surveyed enterprises.

Expected results: To attempt to assess the socio-economic performance of work-integration enterprises, combining three approaches:

- the analysis of the different types of resources mobilised by the enterprises, sourced from the market, from the state or from social capital - the analysis of the objectives of the enterprises and their individual benefits (for workers involved in the work-integration process) and collective benefits (for society at large) that the enterprises generate - the study of their organisational development over time, and particularly the interaction with public policies Bibliography: BORZAGA, C. & DEFOURNY, J. (editors) (2001), The emergence of social enterprise, Routledge.

CIRIEC (2000) Les entreprises et organisations du troisième système. Un enjeu stratégique pour l’emploi, Belgique .

DEFOURNY, J. FAVREAU, L.& LAVILLE, J.L. (dir.) (2000) Insertion et nouvelle économie sociale, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris.

VIDAL, I, (coord.) (1996), Inserción social por el trabajo. Una visión internacional, CIES, Barcelona.

VIDAL, I. (1998) “Espagne. Une nouvelle économie sociale encore mal connue et reconnue” en J. Defourny, L. Favreau & J.L. Laville (dir.) Insertion et nouvelle économie sociale, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris.

VIDAL, I. (1998), “Les entreprises sociales espagnoles: une identité en devenir”. Économie et Humanisme, núm. 347.

Date received: September 19, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # call-59.