I am aware this is my third submitted paper. The other two are my priority since they are about to be submitted to journals. But since I am part of the ICSEM project I also plead for acceptance for this submission ;)
The interest in social enterprises seems to be global (Borzaga & Defourney 2001; Borzaga et al. 2008). This is not surprising since social challenges and some kind of response to these challenges are universal. On the other hand, the common and ‘universal’ terminology, in spite of certain variations, raises questions about the ‘phenomenon’ social enterprises. In this paper social enterprise is elaborated on and related to a Swedish context (Gawell 2014), which includes role(s) in relation to the organization and reconsideration of a welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1990; Trägårdh 2007; Lundström & Sudin 2008).
The concept social enterprise, as well as social entrepreneurship, was introduced in Sweden in the 1990’s and has since then become increasingly common in practice, policy and academy (Pestoff 1998; Stryjan 2001). It is many times used together with, at times synonymous with societal entrepreneurship (Gawell et al. 2009). The debates in which these concepts are used are also many times related to discussions of the role of the public sector, civil society and (ordinary) enterprises in the organization of the commons as well as meeting and cooping with current and future challenges. This means that these concepts on the one hand relates to a debate of society at large. On the other hand they relate to specific discussions on conditions for and form for initiatives dealing with social activities.
But the “phenomenon” or “phenomena” as such has much longer history. Without going back to ‘dawn of time’ the current practice and debate of social enterprises is based on and palpably influenced by the extensive and strong welfare state that emerged during the early twentieth century and has since then characterized the Swedish (and Nordic) society and its civil society (Wijkström & Lundström 2002; Larsson 2008).
Methodologically, this paper is based on many years research on social enterprises, social entrepreneurship, civil society as well as work with ‘ordinary’ entrepreneurship and small businesses. In total they cover approximately 150 cases/initiatives and studies of policy development related to these phenomena (Gawell 2011,2013).
The first part of this paper will continue to elaborate on concept(s) in the Swedish context. In the second part, the main social enterprise models in Sweden will be presented, and in the third part, the institutional trajectories of these SE models in Sweden will be described. Finally, follows a concluding discussion related among other things to the aspects of the welfare triangle (Pestoff 1998).
References
Borzaga,C and Defourny,J (eds) 2001, The Emergence of Social Enterprise. Routledge.
Borzaga, Galera and Nogales (eds) 2008, Social Enterprise: A New Model for Poverty Reduction and Employment Generation. EMES and UNDP.
Esping-Andersen,G. 1990, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Polity Press.
Gawell,M 2011, Inte vilket entreprenrskap som helst. Tillväxtverket.
Gawell,M. 2013, Socialt företagande och försöken att finna fungerande sätt. Arvsfonden.
Gawell,M. 2014, Soci(et)al Entrepreneurship and Different Forms of Social Enterprise, in Lundström,A., Zhou,C., von Fridrichs,Y. and Sundin,E. (Eds.), Social Entrepreneurship. Leveraging Economic, Political and Cultural Dimensions. Springer.
Larsson,J. 2008, Folkhemmet och det europeiska huset. Svensk välfärdsstat i omvandling, Hjalmarsson&Högberg.
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Pestoff,V. 1998, Beyond the Market and State. Social Enterprises and Civil Democracy in a Welfare Society. Aldershot.
Stryjan,Y. 2001, The Emergence of Work-integraion Social Enterprises in Sweden, in Borzaga,C. and Defrouny,J. (Eds.), The Emergence of Social Enterprise. Routledge.
Trägårdh,L. 2007, State and Civil Society in Northern Europe: The Swedish Model Reconsidered, Berghahn Books.
Wijkström,F. and Lundström,T. 2002, Den ideella sektorn. Organisationer i det civila samhället. Sober förlag.
