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The purpose of this paper is to provide the first large data-set regression analysis to test Kerlin’s (2013) macro-institutional social enterprise framework in relation to the country social enterprise models that flow from it. Kerlin (2013) offers a conceptual framework for country social enterprise models that allows countries to retain their unique understanding of social enterprise and better understand the factors influencing its development.

This paper draws on the theory of historical institutionalism and multiple global datasets to test formal hypotheses on the relationship between macro-institutional factors and the size of the social enterprise sector across countries. Social enterprise data were obtained from the 2009 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor dataset. Hypotheses were tested using logistic hierarchical linear modeling.

Results provide support for the framework at a significant level. Nearly half of the variance in the size of the social enterprise sector can be attributed to countries-level factors. We also find that the size of the social enterprise sector varies by economic competitiveness rank, size of the welfare state and collectivist cultural orientation.

The countries included in this study are not representative of the global landscape. Researchers are encouraged to test the framework with a more representative sample of countries, including those in the Global South.

The paper includes implications for policy makers and researchers seeking to facilitate cross-regional dialogue, the transfer and support of social enterprises and research.

This paper fulfills an identified need to advance the field of social enterprise by quantitatively testing established frameworks.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature about the emergence of social enterprises in the world through the case of Chile by proposing the associative–business–cooperative approach as a new inclusive approach to organizational models of social enterprise that complements Kerlin’s conceptual framework.

This work included a literature review of the theoretical frameworks developed by Kerlin (2013) and Salamon and Solokowski (2010), and field work that included 20 in-depth interviews of members of the Chilean social enterprise community and three expert group discussions about the specific dynamics of Chilean social enterprises.

The emergent phenomenon of social enterprise in Chile has two distinctive features that appear to indicate that Kerlin’s conceptual framework does not fully capture how social enterprise is currently conceptualized in Chile: the long-term dynamics of convergence and (re-)emergence of different organizational models of social enterprises and the participation and evolution of different organizational models of social enterprise over the course of history and their lasting impact.

The lack of data is the main limitation of this research.

Capture the emergent phenomenon of social enterprises in Chile at an early stage of development with an inclusive approach that considers the diversity of the main organizational models of social enterprise and the profound institutional changes happening in Chile during the past decades.

A deep understanding of the Chilean institutional context in the development of social enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the prior work on social enterprise (SE) model comparisons by exposing the difficulties in producing universally comparative SE models. Furthermore, this paper seeks to trace different dominant stories of SE based on a combined historical and discursive analysis of Australian institutions shaping SE development.

This paper emulates the methodological approach taken by Kerlin (2013) and uses the same indices and measures adopted in this original model comparison. Although the valuable contribution of macro-level model comparison studies to the growing SE knowledge base is noted, it is proposed that categorisations are naturally exclusionary by their design, omitting emergent SE models and their institutional influences. These omissions pose difficulties for recognising and conceptualising hybrid organisations that often traverse institutional boundaries and frameworks (Doherty et al., 2014). A discourse analysis of SE policies in Australia was used to illustrate how micro-level appraisals of SE models differentiate from, and complement, the macro-level approach.

A combinatory analysis of Australian SEs, based on historical and discursive institutional theories, provides two stories about these organisations. The first story emerges that Australian SEs are partly shaped by institutions, the historical path-dependencies of which are associated with particular SE characteristics. Alternatively, using a discursive lens, the second story of Australian SEs emerges as a political subject, captured within a broader idea (e.g. social inclusion) that is coordinated between political domains and communicated within the public sphere. Therefore, it is argued that a combinatory approach shows SE models as they are, as well as how they might be – contingent on the implementation of identified policies.

The major contribution is to critique and extend Kerlin’s (2013) approach by complementing the macro-level study of SE models with an analysis that considers the local-level innovations that drive unique SE models and applications. To enact this, the authors explore how closely macro-level approaches to SE categorisation are the subject of discursive construction, as well as historical events. Consequently, this paper contributes to existing knowledge by advancing existing approaches to SE model studies, illustrating how different stories of SE can be drawn out from combinatory methods and local knowledge.

The practical implication arising from this paper is that SE discourses are both a subject of capture and a site of contestation, meaning that various institutional actors play a role in shaping the “reality” of the field.

The main social implication of this paper is that Australian SEs make a diverse contribution, but there are dangers that the discursive construction of civil society could narrow and constrain this.

The novelty inherent in this approach lies in bringing together two frameworks to explore the same field of action. By replicating Kerlin’s (2013) approach and bringing in a discursive analytical framework, it is shown that macro-level studies of SE sectors are enhanced by combinatory methodologies.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

This paper aims to examine the distinctiveness of South Korean social enterprises from a historical institutionalism perspective. From this perspective, the author focuses on the proactive roles played by the government in the process of emergence and formulation of social enterprises in South Korea. The author roots this paper in the concept of the developmental state and examines how this concept applies to newly emerging social enterprises in South Korea.

This paper first introduces the process of South Korean social enterprises’ emergence as an independent phenomenon. The author explains the process with a link to governmental actions, such as the introduction of public programs and government acts. Second, this paper introduces the concept of developmental state which captures the proactive role of the state in social, economic and political development in South Korea. Third, this paper applies the institutional framework proposed by Kerlin (2013) to see how the South Korean social enterprise model can be located from a comparative perspective and how the South Korean model can contribute to the expansion of the existing framework.

This paper finds that the state involvement in South Korea is a reflection of the historical path of the developmental state. The cross-comparison of South Korean social enterprises from a historical institutionalist approach finds that the South Korean case may contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate by suggesting taking a Weberian ideal type of an interventionist state into account for an extension of the proposed framework. This paper also uncovered the strategic approach of the South Korean Government in utilizing this public policy tool by adopting and combining existing social enterprise models.

This paper demonstrates the state’s intents to mobilize economic and societal resources as public policy intervention tools, which can be understood from a developmental state context. This role would be distinct when compared to those in Europe and the USA. This paper has a limitation to restrict its analytical scope to formally recognized social enterprises because it focuses on the role of the state in utilizing social enterprises for public policy agenda: social development and social welfare provision.

As a practical implication, this study might provide an insightful framework for South Korean public policy makers, outlining the contributions and limitations of state-led public policies associated with social enterprises. As seen in the historical path of governmental interventions, governmental public policies do not necessarily guarantee their sustainable community impacts without the consideration of private or nonprofit actors’ spontaneous involvements. The flip side of state-led interventions requires policy makers to become more cautious, as they address social problems with public policy intents.

The majority of current studies on social enterprises in South Korea mainly focus on reporting the quantitative increase in the number of registered social enterprises. Beyond this quantitative description of its achievement, this paper also provides a historical narration and philosophical background of this phenomenon. Additionally, it shows how this artificial government intervention in social enterprises could be accepted from a historical perspective and brought remarkable responses from the private and civil society sectors in South Korea.

This paper aims to improve upon the initial quantitative assessment of Kerlin’s macro-institutional social enterprise (MISE) framework (Monroe-White et al., 2015) to test for the effect of country-level institutions on the social enterprise sector. Major improvements are the inclusion of the civil society variable and expansion of the culture component in the analysis.

By following Kerlin’s (2013) original work that draws on the theory of historical institutionalism, this paper employs multi-level regression analysis to test the effect of country-level institutional factors on organizational-level social enterprise across countries. This analysis uses new macro-level data specifically for civil society and culture components.

The initial assessment of the framework found that several country-level factors had a significant effect on the variance in the size of the social enterprise sector across countries. The analysis provided here additionally shows a significant positive influence of civil society on the size of the social enterprise sector and shows that formal institutions capture the effect of informal cultural institutions when included in the model together.

This analysis provides policymakers, development actors and researchers with a better understanding of the influence of civil society on social enterprises and the interaction between formal and informal institutional underlying factors.

This paper’s significant contribution is the addition of civil society in the MISE analysis, which was not possible before owing to lack of data, and additional cultural analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to review the development and impact of the Social Enterprise Journal (SEJ) from its inception in 2005 until present day.

The paper analyses the thematic content of SEJ and its impact data from 2005 until 2017.

SEJ has broken new ground in the study of social enterprise (SE). It was the first journal back in 2005 to commence the exploration of this field and since has been the first to publish works on defining SE, their performance management, critical perspectives plus international differences. The paper shows that in the early years, SEJ was dominated by conceptual work aiming to understand SE plus their governance and performance management, which was mainly based on UK descriptive case studies and uncritical. By 2010, SEJ became established internationally with various issues being 100 per cent dominated by international aspects of SE. Recent more critical work has also enabled a process of “myth busting” in the SE field. This paper also shows the growth of SEJ in downloads and citations.

The paper demonstrates the important role SEJ has played in both improving practice and informing policy.

The paper is the first to review the development and impact of SEJ.

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.