Understanding social enterprise country models: Spain

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the historical institutional context of Spain in the past 40 years and to analyze the influence of institutional factors in the current model of social enterprise existing in the country.

Design/methodology/approach

This study draws on the theory of historical institutionalism, national-level empirical data and Kerlin conceptual framework (2013) that informs models of social enterprise.

Findings

This paper describe some traits of Spain’s social enterprise that can be explained by the evolution of its institutional context in the past 40 years. It helps to validate, from a historical institutionalistic perspective, aspects of the Kerlin framework for social enterprise models. It also begins to show that the analysis of regional differences in the context should be taken into consideration when examining a country’s social enterprise space.

Research limitations/implications

This discussion paper encourages academics to analyze regional differences in the emergence of social enterprise within a country. The main limitation of the paper is the lack of an “official” definition of social enterprise in Spain.

Originality/value

This paper applies a valuable framework to a country with a unique political and economic history in the past 40 years. It contributes to enrich the research on the emergence and development of social enterprises in a variety of contexts and advances understanding of how regional differences inside a country influence the development of social enterprises.

Citation

Fisac, R. and Moreno-Romero, A. (2015), "Understanding social enterprise country models: Spain", Social Enterprise Journal, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 156-177. https://doi.org/10.1108/SEJ-02-2014-0012