The International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project

Many observers are still looking for a definition of social enterprise that would be broadly accepted. Policy makers would like to have clear criteria to identify the social enterprises that they want to support. Even scholars... [ view full abstract ]

Many observers are still looking for a definition of social enterprise that would be broadly accepted. Policy makers would like to have clear criteria to identify the social enterprises that they want to support. Even scholars and researchers sometimes suffer from the apparent confusion generated by endless conceptual debates.
The ICSEM Project, launched in 2013 and now in its final phase, has developed a research strategy that goes much deeper than the conceptual debate and thereby lays theoretical and empirical foundations for a new analytical framework, highlighting a diversity of social enterprise models.
Involving some 230 researchers from 55 countries across all world regions, the ICSEM Project relied first on country-specific analyses of SE landscapes. In a second stage, it included a survey, based on a detailed questionnaire, common to all research partners and involved countries, and which resulted in an international dataset covering 730 social enterprises. Two major ICSEM outputs will be presented in this session: the very first results achieved through cluster analysis applied to a list of major variables in the dataset, on the one hand, and comparative analysis of some transversal issues which are key to understanding the diversity and the potential of social enterprises in various contexts, on the other hand.

Speakers:

- Jacques Defourny: Testing the relevance of major SE models: first results from the worldwide ICSEM database on social enterprises
(with M. Nyssens, O. Brolis)

- Davorka Vidovič and Julianna Kiss: The influence of historical and institutional legacies of post-socialist regimes on the present-day social enterprises in Central and Eastern Europe
(with A. Ciepielewska-Kowalik, L. Hubai, K. Legnerová, M. Dohnalová)

- Danijel Baturina: Role of external funding in development of social entrepreneurship in CEE and SEE countries
(with A. Agolli, E. Haska, J. Kiss, M. Mihály, M. Bashevska, J. Korunovska Srbijanko, M. Lisetchi, N. Bibu, D. Rakin, V. Radojicic)

- Simone Poledrini: The interplay of contextual factors and characteristics of cooperative social enterprises in Europe, North America and Australia
(with N. Göler von Ravensburg, R. Lang, M. Starnawska)