Over the last decade, social enterprises have been increasingly visible in the Belgian landscape. Yet the concept of the “social economy” on which the notion of social enterprise relies (Defourny 2001) is much older. From an institutional point of view, the recognition and the promotion of the social economy in Belgium are important. All regional governments now have a minister in charge of the social economy (often with other spheres of competencies). However, in many cases the concept tends to be reduced due to the association with specific competencies. In Flanders and in Brussels, as a competence of the labour ministry, the social economy has thus often been associated only with the integration of low-skilled workers on the labor market. In Wallonia, as a competence of the ministry of the economy, it has only been considered in its market-oriented version. As a result of this recognition, various tools have been set up in the last ten years to provide social enterprises with credit facilities, securities and seed capital as well as technical support through dedicated consultancy agencies.
The concept of social enterprise is still fuzzy in Belgium. On one hand, it is more and more frequently used to stress the entrepreneurial approach adopted by an increasing number of organisations in the social economy. On the other hand, given the difficulties to discriminate between “entrepreneurial” and “non-entrepreneurial” social economy organizations, a common view has been to use the term “social enterprise” as a synonym for any organization in the social economy. This second, broader view is anchored into the EMES ideal-type of social enterprise that defines the “economic dimension” in a broad way, emphasizing dynamics of production and risk-taking rather than strict criteria in terms of market-based outcomes as common in other social enterprise approaches (Defourny & Nyssens 2006; 2010). Hence, the social enterprise concept is an opportunity for social economy networks and support structures to “rebrand” these organizations in a more appealing way (see Dart 2004 for a discussion of this phenomenon).
This working paper is structured as follows. The first introductory section reviews the main historical roots that have led to the emergence of a diversity of models related to social enterprise and the social economy. These roots are the associative, cooperative and “new social economy” traditions, combined with the influence of public policies and, more recently, for-profit businesses. Next, based on this analysis, the second section identifies four main models for social enterprises in Belgium and sketches the main features of these models in terms of legal forms, types of social missions addressed, governance dynamics and resources. These models are then illustrated in different fields of activity both established and emerging, namely: integration of low-skilled workers, personal services, social finance, fair trade, renewable energy and short food supply chains. Finally, section four proposes a transversal analysis of the main trends and challenges facing the different models.
