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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that it is feasible to theoretically and empirically build an international typology of social enterprise (SE) models. The authors first rely on their previous work (Defourny and Nyssens, 2017), suggesting that the concept of “interest principles” can serve as a cornerstone in such perspective. This concept, when combined with that of SEs’ “resource mixes”, allows to design an analytical tool that shows from which “matrices” and through which “trajectories” several distinct SE models can emerge, namely, the “non-profit entrepreneurial model”, the “social cooperative model”, the “social business model” and the “public sector model”.

This paper combines deductive and inductive approaches. In a deductive perspective, the authors build upon the analytical framework proposed by Gui (1991) to identify capital interest, mutual interest and general interest as key driving forces and fundamental motives in the overall economy. To confront their theoretical construction and their tentative typology of SE models with field realities, the authors also adopt an inductive approach, relying on bottom-up research strategies developed in the seven “ICSEM country contributions” forming this special issue.

At first view, mapping exercises of SE categories in the seven countries seem to highlight a high degree of heterogeneity. However, a closer analysis of these apparently diverging contributions clearly suggests that the four major SE models derived from the authors’ theoretical framework find significant empirical support in most—if not all—countries.

Although major statistical work to test the authors’ typology of SE models remains to be carried out, mainly through the exploitation of the international ICSEM database (which covers over 700 SEs from more than 40 countries), this paper represents a first—although limited—attempt to collect empirical evidence for testing this typology.

In 2022, the EMES Network celebrated its 20th anniversary. The purpose of this paper is to trace the intellectual path of social enterprise (SE) research that has unfolded through some of the major EMES research projects.

This journey is recounted through three major milestones: the emergence and development of the EMES approach; the identification of various SE schools of thought; the International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project.

The first section digs into the roots of the EMES approach – an ideal-type which allowed researchers to explore an SE field that was then largely unknown. In a second stage, a reading grid was developed to identify the different SE conceptions, their convergences and their divergences. In a third step, the ICSEM Project, acknowledging the impossibility to provide a single, universal definition of SE, aimed to identify SE models across the world. Defourny and Nyssens developed an SE typology and made the hypothesis that it was neither country-specific nor even context-specific. Based on the EMES ideal-type (which constituted a particularly relevant tool to inform the diversity of SE models), data were collected on over 700 SEs worldwide; three major SE models were found in almost all the countries covered.

This contribution does not aim to summarise all the – numerous and fruitful – research projects carried out by EMES members, but to show the common thread that runs through several of them.

This paper aims to examine the applicability of the benefits theory of nonprofit finance to an international sample of social enterprises (SEs).

This research analyzes the revenue sources of SEs through the lens of benefits theory. In particular, the authors test the links between revenue sources and the character of an enterprise’s mission. This study uses data on 545 SEs collected by the International Comparative Social Enterprise Models project, which was an international collaborative effort of more than 200 researchers. The authors use cross-sectional multivariate regression to identify the factors which influence the revenue portfolios of SEs.

The findings provide evidence of SE revenue portfolios that are nuanced and complicated. Benefits theory helps to illuminate this nuance. The application of benefits theory to SE goes beyond the traditional characterization of the publicness and privateness of goods and services to include the intended beneficiaries, the nature of benefits they receive and the management practices followed to assure distribution of benefits to intended beneficiary groups. By analyzing the public (and private) goals of SEs, such as employment generation and food security, the authors gain an understanding of what they really do, and hence, how they can be best financed.

This study provides empirical support to the applicability of benefits theory to SEs, which provides both theoretical advancement and practical implications.

This paper aims to summarise a contribution to the International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It particularly highlights the relevance of the social constructionist approach adopted in the study to investigate and make sense of the social enterprise concept as an imported concept in a new environment.

This approach is used as a thread to follow through the structure proposed by the ICSEM Project, namely, to look at the concept in context, to identify social enterprise models and establish a typology, as well as to describe institutional trajectories shaping the models. This paper highlights the constructs and institutional trajectories shaping the concept, and the main findings of the study when identifying the models and establishing the typology, based on an in-depth survey of 12 social enterprises in the UAE.

While this typology can be considered as a preliminary one, it reveals creative recurrent models, with the state and private sector involved as incubators. Although the UAE offers a tax-free environment, the lack of a legal and regulatory system conducive to social enterprises seems to hamper the opportunities for them to develop and scale up.

This contribution is the first study to investigate the ecosystem of social enterprise and its deriving models, and to propose a preliminary typology in the UAE.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to outline the historical and current contextual forces behind the development of the social enterprise movement in Israel and to analyze the different models identified by the research team along which social enterprises are formed at present.

The study was part of the International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) Project and the methodology used in the analysis of the models was the one used in the international comparison. It entailed the analysis of three to five case studies within each model, which were analyzed along three major dimensions: the economic basis of the enterprise, its social objectives and its governance structure.

The findings suggest that social enterprises in Israel develop along four major models, all within existing different incorporation systems; these are nonprofit organizations, privately owned business enterprises, cooperatives and public-sector frameworks. On the basis of the case studies analyzed, it was possible to identify specific characteristic configurations of the three dimensions (economic/social/governance) that were at the basis of the model and guided it.

The study is the first of its kind to present a broad picture of the developing social enterprise scene in Israel and as such can clearly inform and guide both researchers and policymakers in their future work on the development of the social enterprise phenomenon in the country.

The purpose of this paper is to present a tentative typology of social enterprises in South Africa. It also tries to establish a base line on the current state of social entrepreneurship in South Africa. While the term seems to have been appearing more and more frequently in both the public and political domain in the past decade or so, the current knowledge of social enterprise in South Africa (as in Africa more broadly) remains very limited.

This paper tries to address this dearth of academic literature on social entrepreneurship in South Africa by reviewing the extant academic and grey literature as well as various policy documents with the aim of discerning the various legal forms under which social enterprises can incorporate.

The paper distinguishes three avenues for incorporation: as a non-profit entity, a for-profit entity or a hybrid structure.

It calls for both rigorous and systematic empirical and theoretical work that is grounded in the realities of the country to strengthen sound policy decision-making as well as effective organisation and management of these organisations, which can play a crucial role in both economic and social development of South Africa.

As part of the International Comparative Social Enterprise Models (ICSEM) project, this paper contributes to the understanding of the geographically distinct manifestations of social enterprise in South Africa. At the same time, it aims to present a research agenda to move social entrepreneurship in South Africa forward.

This paper aims to explore the availability of new legal models for social enterprise development in Australia, asking the question: what does a distinctive focus on legal form add to the scholarly exploration of social enterprise? The paper has a dual purpose: firstly, to present a general empirical review of the fact, possible causes and implications of the absence of new legal models for social enterprise in Australia; and secondly, to make a polemical argument highlighting some of the advantages of developing a distinctive legal structure for social entrepreneurs in Australia.

The paper reconciles two contending accounts. One would stress the absence of new legal models (the “gap” analysis). The other would acknowledge the absence of new legal models, while stressing the relevance of existing legal models for pursuing social enterprise goals. Both accounts are descriptively true, but the tension between them relates in part to the level of analysis (legal-political, collective voluntary action or bottom-up individual actors) and, in part, to longstanding tensions in the conceptualisation of social enterprise.

The paper provides evidence of the rising salience of existing cooperative legal forms, rising diversity in the legal model choices of individual social enterprises and the emergence of two significant bottom-up developments in voluntary model rules. The legal-political bottleneck that remains is related to the constitutional structure of federal and state power, key macro-political policy trends in the late 1990s and the distinctive nature of the Australian “wage-earners” welfare state settlement.

The paper highlights that what may appear as a “gap” in the legal landscape of Australian social enterprise is more nuanced. Despite the striking absence of any distinct new legislated legal models, the overall situation is a complex landscape providing multiple threads for weaving together diverse forms of social enterprise. Although legal frameworks may not be as salient as governance design choices, they generate three important second-order effects: signalling, legitimation and professional networks. Taken together, these may support a case for the distinctive value of a specific hybrid legal model for social enterprise.

This study aims to understand the importance of participatory governance in the identity of social enterprises (SEs). To this end, this paper provides a framework by means of the value co-creation process and by drawing from the service-dominant logic perspective and the stakeholder theory. An explanation is also provided regarding the opportunity to include fundamental issues in defining SE collective identity, such as those related to an organisation’s participatory nature of involving the stakeholders affected by its activities, the exercise of democratic decision-making and its autonomy from the state and market.

On the statistical exploitation of a large international data set, the authors approach the conceptualisation of SEs by providing an index to measure their social, economic and governance characteristics, thereby enabling these enterprises to be categorised into different groups.

This study found that the inclusion of the governance dimension in the research incorporates the greatest variability between the various models of SE, thereby justifying participatory governance as the raison d’être of the two fundamental schools in SE, namely, Anglo-Saxon and European.

This research offers a tool to policymakers to be used as a criterion of classification and hierarchical organisation for public procurement. It enables the various organisations to be ordered and takes social and cultural influence into consideration. This tool would be highly useful as a support of social entrepreneurship from the public environment, especially at the local level.

This study justifies the value of incorporating participatory governance as a distinctive dimension for the definition of categories of SEs. Furthermore, an index to craft taxonomies of SEs is developed based on social, economic and governance indicators, which provides a framework that facilitates the empirical research of the SE.

The purpose of this paper is to build a typology of social entrepreneurship in Russian Federation and describe the related models based on a deep understanding of the current institutional context and the positioning of social entrepreneurship in the arena of market and non-market activities.

This paper is based on secondary data sources including legal documents, annual reports and websites of the social entrepreneurship-related organizations.

This paper finds that social entrepreneurship in Russia is located between civil society, the State and the market and it is the State that became a main driving force behind social entrepreneurship development.

This paper is the first to perceive the social entrepreneurship in modern Russia as a phenomenon with “semi-official” status. The original models and the very typology of social entrepreneurship are based on the newly introduced concept of “social-entrepreneurial mission”.