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We explore how NGO’s local entrepreneurial initiatives to empower women entrepreneurs can compensate for weak state policies for women in a context of male-dominated socio-cultural norms.

We use the case of a local entrepreneurial initiative launched in the Atlas region of Morocco, the Empowering Women in the Atlas Initiative (EWA). We collected data through 51 semi-structured interviews of women entrepreneurs in three cooperatives which exploit the natural resources of their region to establish a social venture. Our data are longitudinal as they were collected at two time periods: before and after the initiative.

The findings of this study suggest that local entrepreneurial initiatives can have a significant impact on rural women entrepreneurs’ empowerment. The improved perception of empowerment has not only helped them develop capacities to leverage the business opportunities linked to the natural resources of their region, but it has also increased their status and role within their family and community.

We make recommendations for policymakers to encourage this type of initiative to compensate for the absence of supporting policies geared toward women.

Our study is one of the first to look at empowerment as a policy instrument to develop women entrepreneurial activities in rural areas of developing countries. Our paper uses a unique hierarchical perspective and a multidimensional framework for analyzing social cooperative ventures and rural women entrepreneurs’ empowerment. Our paper unravels interesting insights for women entrepreneurs’ narration strategies.

There is still no universal definition of the third sector in Europe, but it can be seen as including all types of non-governmental not-for-profit entities such as non-profit organizations, mutuals, cooperatives, social enterprises and foundations. This article attempts to make sense of the current shifting conceptualization of the third sector in Europe. It is based on short country summaries of the images and concepts of the third sector in 13 European countries by EMES Network’s members, first presented in 2008 (Defourny and Pestoff, 2008; nine of them were recently revised and are found in the appendix to this article.). The perception and development of the third sector in Europe is closely related to the other major social governance institutions/mechanisms, like the market, state and community and through the third sector’s interaction with them. Moreover, many third sector organizations (TSOs) overlap with these other social institutions, resulting in varying degrees of hybridity and internal tensions experienced by them. TSOs can generate resources from their activities on the market, by providing services in partnership with the state and/or by promoting the interests of a given community or group. The country overviews document a growing professionalization of TSOs in most countries and a growing dependency of public funds to provide services. This has important theoretical and practical implications for orienting the articles included in this book. Thus, it can provide a key for better understanding the discussion and analysis in the remainder of this volume.

This paper aims to re-evaluate social enterprise (SE) history to pinpoint a pluralist turn in communitarian philosophy during the 1970s, which has the potential to transform labour and consumer rights in enterprise development.

Through a close examination of model rules created by founders of the FairShares Association (FSA), the authors find that the communitarian origins of SE are disturbingly obscured and hidden.

In studying FSA documents and building a timeline of the development of the FairShares Model (FSM), the authors found links between SE developments in the UK, continental Europe, Asia, North/South America and the development of solidarity cooperatives.

The authors argue that the discovery of a communitarian pluralist turn advances “new cooperativism” by enfranchising both labour and users in industrial relations (IR). Using this insight, they challenge accounts of SE history and argue for more research on SE’s potential contribution to radical IR.

The paper highlights the potential of the FSM as a vehicle for catalysing new SE and IR practices that share wealth and power more equitably between social entrepreneurs, workforce members, service/product users and community/social investors.

Purpose: To examine the refugee women's empowerment and integration component of the pilot program of a Turkish social entrepreneurial organization (SEO) specialized in supporting disadvantaged women's empowerment. Methodology/Approach: The chapter utilizes a comparative qualitative case study approach to investigate the interplay between the dimensions of: business model, knowledge acquisition, and learning experiences, the achievement of goals, and scalability in determining social innovations. Findings: Despite the widespread belief that women's cooperative is an ideal business model for inclusivity, the chapter presents a variance in achieving this goal. The results propose that a strong business model, enhanced with knowledge acquisition and learning, and an inclusive approach to innovation, enable a women's cooperative to offer desirable solutions to community needs, improving its chances for higher impact. Research Limitations/Implications: The chapter adds to social entrepreneurship literature by offering multilevel analysis in examining social innovation, which has been often neglected as a research approach in the field. It asserts that an investigation into the community as a unit of analysis promises to be viable research in social innovation studies. Practical Implications: An inclusive approach that develops relations with the broader community and networking with other cooperatives and social actors is essential for women's cooperatives. Social Implications: The SEO's increasing local reach and impact have made it a strong actor in women's empowerment on the ground and force for institutional change. In the long term, SEOs' actions targeting multiple actors of influence will increase the chances of suggested framework changes accepted by policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which social cooperatives in Italy followed and managed to preserve their core values and principles while withstanding multiple pressures during the great recession. Attention is paid to two key issues. First, the concept of political agency is used to understand whether social cooperatives have been sensitive and committed to their role as key political players in the sustainable development of the community in which they operate. A further issue addressed is the impact of the post-2008 crisis on the quality of work and employment in social cooperatives.

This paper adopts a mixed-method social research approach. It integrates quantitative analysis of administrative data on business life cycle drawn from the Italian business registers with empirical evidence collected via in-depth interviews and focus groups on a sample of managers of social cooperatives and representatives of social cooperative associations and consortia.

Findings suggest that the great recession and welfare state retrenchment have worsened the quality of work and employment. Nonetheless, evidence produced through qualitative research also shows that social cooperatives have proved to be well suited to displaying political agency and acting as a key political player at local level.

Results of field research are not generalizable.

Comparatively higher resilience of cooperatives, which is very much attributable to their specific rationale and mission, may come at a cost. The literature has largely missed investigating this cost, which can also be measured in terms of consistency with core values. Indeed, the sustainability of cooperatives relates to economic indicators, such as employment and economic performance, but also to the social, cultural and political dimension of the enterprise. In this regard, this paper investigates the extent to which, during the post-2008 crisis, cooperative enterprises managed to preserve the quality of work and employment and play a political role in the welfare system.

The economic growth and women’s empowerment nexus features prominently within United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). While the gendered view of inclusive economic opportunities has received significant attention in recent years, the gap between men and women in developing countries remains significant. Under the assumption that there are fertile prospects to bridge social responsibility and SDGs judiciously, this chapter explores the question: ‘what insights into women’s employment and empowerment can be generated from the state of cooperative enterprises in Nepal?’ The focus is on aspects of women’s employment and empowerment under goal 8, which promotes inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all. Learning from the Nepalese experiences, the chapter contends that cooperative enterprise social responsibility (CESR) needs to be approached as the vital link between the internal and the external interests of cooperatives to achieve SDGs.

The foremost objective of this chapter was to present an overview of the cooperative healthcare sector in Argentina by reviewing its brief history, components and the role these healthcare cooperatives play in the society. The second objective was to look at how these cooperatives have helped women and the local communities in which they operate.

This paper has used chiefly secondary data derived from various academic papers and official and government websites which publish cooperative sector-related information. The intention was to construct a concise yet detailed study that would be of help to other researchers in the field of healthcare cooperatives since the data related to Argentina is highly scattered and frequently found not up to date.

The research has found that health cooperatives in Argentina have aided in overcoming problems in the sector such as sectoral fragmentation, negligence and frequently inadequate standards of care management as well as operational and implementation failures that the private and government healthcare players have been accused of being fraught with. Furthermore, the cooperatives have frequently played a complementary or supplementary role rather than a competitive one with the private and government players.

Through the examples presented in this chapter, it is evident that health cooperatives in Argentina are making large impacts in the healthcare domain along with positively impacting women, marginalised and vulnerable sections of the society and the community. It only remains to be seen now how far this sector will grow in the future and how many more lives will be benefitted.

Coffee producers typically sell raw coffee beans as the first step in a global value chain. Recently, groups of producers have formed coffee cooperatives that attempt to regain market power by integrating the other steps of the value chain. This study uses matching to estimate the effect of membership in one such cooperative on the household economy of indigenous coffee producers in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. It contributes to the literature by considering new determinants of participation and outcomes of interest. First, social capital at the individual and village level is correlated with cooperative membership more than other demographic factors. Second, cooperative members report an increase in the share of coffee sold and income from coffee sales but not in per-kilo price or total income. These two results reflect particular features of the Chiapas reality and the desires of the indigenous people the cooperative serves. Thus, they reiterate the importance for economic development projects to consider the context of their interventions.

This research paper aims to explore the impact artisan cooperatives have upon women employed in Sub-Saharan Africa. Impacts were detailed using the theoretical framework of social capital theory to demonstrate the networks within artisan cooperatives that connect to greater opportunities for social and economic benefits.

A phenomenological approach was used for this study based upon the shared experiences of women who were leading artisan cooperatives in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study included semi-structured interviews over Zoom with Chief Entrepreneur Founders of artisan cooperatives located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Documents from the cooperatives were analyzed to triangulate the cooperatives’ current projects and efforts.

Three prevalent themes emerged: (1) key partnerships, (2) benefits of the cooperative and (3) change and growth among the women and communities. Empowerment was felt through both economic and social impacts upon the women.

This article captures the perspective of the Chief Entrepreneur Founders and their observations and experiences the women shared with them. Emic perspectives from the women who participate in the artisan cooperatives is the focus of future research.

These social enterprises serve as exemplary models for other cooperatives to provide dignified and sustainable work to impact the lives of women serving in these communities.

This study contributes research on social entrepreneurship within artisan cooperatives. It provides a baseline for further research on the artisan sector specifically for the sustainable development goals of gender equality, decent work and economic growth.

The purpose of this paper is to address a theoretical and methodological framework to validate a model for explaining social responsibility in cooperative societies.

A qualitative methodology based on the assessment and agreement of an expert panel has been used. More exactly, a Delphi technique will help achieve agreement about the set of indicators previously defined and to get a single and agreed definition.

The results consist of a consensus scale for each variable of the proposed model. This unanimity in the opinions about the final result will be the basis for further quantitative treatment of the proposed conceptual model.

Limitations derive from the initial state of the study and the need to practical analysis.

Cooperative societies could have a way to analyze their position related to social responsibility. In general, contributions to social responsibility have improved, in particular, in the field of these entities.

The paper contributes to properly measure the variables of the conceptual model. The main variable of analysis, called Orientation to Social Responsibility in Cooperatives (OSRCOOP), is not directly observable, and it is necessary to measure it through a set of indicators. Likewise, with the other strategic variables with which OSRCOOP is related to the model proposed (member satisfaction, innovation, quality of service and cooperative outcome or performance).