Social Enterprises and Public Value: A Multiple-Case Study Assessment
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RESEARCH PAPERS
Social Enterprises and Public Value: A Multiple-Case Study Assessment Federica Bandini1 • Sabrina Gigli1 • Laura Mariani2
Accepted: 5 October 2020 International Society for Third-Sector Research 2020
Abstract Positioned at the crossroads of the market, public policies and civil society, social enterprises are private organizations that achieve social goals and, in an entrepreneurial way, respond to collective needs. By considering the micro-foundation of value generation as emerging from the assessment of three Italian social cooperatives’ business models, the aim of this paper is to understand the contribution, and the approach adopted by work integration social enterprises to the creation of public value. Our findings suggest that the approach adopted in order to generate value, changes according to several contextual factors. We identified, in particular, three models (the cooperative-driven, the people-driven, and the market-driven model) that are characterized by different relationship with the cooperative system, a differentiated tension toward commercial activities and specific catalysts for value creation. Keywords Social enterprises Public value Business model Social cooperatives
Introduction The role that organizations play in addressing social problems and creating social value has always been a critical dimension of market economies (Hall 1987, & Laura Mariani [email protected] 1
Department of Management, University of Bologna, Via Capo di Lucca, 34, 40126 Bologna, Italy
2
Department of Management, University of Bergamo, Via dei Caniana, 2, 24127 Bergamo, Italy
Thompson et al. 2002). However, the use of the term social entrepreneurship and the development of social enterprise (SE) theories are more recent phenomena that have been promoted by a wide range of politicians and personalities in civil society. They have been drawing attention to successful examples of social entrepreneurs who affect social change by introducing innovative business models that address some of the most complex social problems, therefore, conquering media and political space. Positioned at the crossroads of the market, public policies and civil society (Nyssens 2007), SEs are hybrid organizations that achieve social goals and, in an entrepreneurial way, respond to collective needs (Battilana and Lee 2014; Battilana et al. 2015; Borzaga and Defourney 2001) with a more or less prominent orientation to commercial activities (Sandberg et al. 2019a, b). The perception of the ability of SEs to produce social outcomes through a more innovative and responsive business than those of both public institutions and traditional third sector organizations is one of the drivers of the increased attention of governments to social entrepreneurship phenomena (Powell et al. 2019; Powell and Osborne 2015). Governments, in fact, are progressively looking toward SEs and other hybrid organizations to deliver social welfare services (Cornelius and Wallace 2010), and bring up ethical issues related to the need to addr
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