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The sector of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) has grown considerably all across Europe during the last few decades. Unfortunately, many governments do not have a clear sight on the profile of WISEs they are supporting. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed profile of WISEs in Flanders and identify shifts and differences within and between WISE work forms.

Data are utilized from a newly designed monitoring instrument to capture the profile of WISEs in Flanders (Belgium). This paper discusses some methodological issues in using administrative data to monitor this sector, and present a profile at the enterprise level and at the worker level. Parametric and nonparametric tests are applied to assess the significance of profile shifts and differences within this sector.

One of the dominant features of the analysis has been the identification of profound differences that can be observed between the work forms and the slighter differences that are observed within the work forms while comparing start‐ups to their mature counterparts. Therefore, it might be concluded that the policy framework on the social insertion economy as it currently exists in Flanders has a strong regulative impact on the WISEs in Flanders. This impact translates itself through differences in the profile of enterprises, as well as differences in the profile of the target group workers they employ.

A dataset combining administrative data are created to estimate enterprise and target group worker profiles in this sector. The discussion on methodological aspects involved contributes to the literature on monitoring this sector.

Twelve years ago, the concept of social enterprise was rarely discussed in Europe, however it is now making significant breakthroughs in European Union (EU) countries. Within this context, the purpose of this paper is to synthesize major evolutions experienced by social enterprises across Europe and the key challenges they are facing; and specific members of the EMES European Research Network provide a more in‐depth update as to current trends and debates in their respective countries

This paper is based on a comparative analysis of the different institutions (legal frameworks, public policies, supporting structures, public procurement policies …) which support the development of social enterprises in the different EU countries. To delimit the field, the paper relies on the “ideal‐type” social enterprise as defined by the EMES network: “Social enterprises are not‐for‐profit private organizations providing goods or services directly related to their explicit aim to benefit the community. They rely on a collective dynamics involving various types of stakeholders in their governing bodies, they place a high value on their autonomy and they bear economic risks linked to their activity”.

It was found that although the concept of social enterprise itself has not gained the same recognition in all EU countries (and is even still poorly understood in several of them), the reality is that growth and social enterprise are being experienced in most EU countries.

If the concept of social enterprise is on the public agenda of several EU countries, the understanding as well as the institutions to support their development vary from one country to the other. This paper provides a comparative analysis of this heterogeneous but rich landscape.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the socio-economic background and development of social enterprises in Korea and identify representative social enterprise models.

The typology used in this study focuses on the interaction between civil society, the state and the market in their efforts to solve social problems. As a result, the typology is mainly related with social goals, although the organizational form is also taken into consideration when selecting representative social enterprises in each type so as to present a broad array of developmental histories.

This paper identified four types of social enterprises: work integration social enterprises; social service provision social enterprises; regional regeneration social enterprises; and alter-economy social enterprises. These types are not immutable; another form of social enterprise might emerge to address a new social issue and lead to a new strand of similar social enterprises.

This study found that the goals of social enterprises in Korea share common characteristics with those of social enterprises in European countries. Another outstanding feature of Korean social enterprises is that most social enterprises other than work integration social enterprises also regard work integration or job creation for the disadvantaged people as one of their important social missions.

This paper aims to explore the ways in which social supports can promote enduring attachments to work and improve overall well-being of disadvantaged workers, within the context of social purpose enterprises.

With coordinators, managers and directors as informants, this mixed-methods study uses a survey and interviews to establish the availability and importance of different social supports found in social purpose enterprises across Canada, and to explore the reasons for such support mobilization and the influences that determine whether social supports are sought or accepted.

Findings substantiate the prevalence and importance of work-centred social supports. Social supports can promote more sustainable attachment to work by addressing work process challenges, ameliorating workplace conflict, attending to non-vocational work barriers and building workers’ self-confidence and self-belief. The source of a support, as well as the relationship between support providers and recipients, contributes to whether supports will be beneficial to recipients.

Future studies require corroboration directly from the employees and training participants of social purpose enterprises. The limitations on the sampling and the survey response rate may limit generalizability of findings.

Findings contribute to knowledge on more effective social support provision for improved work outcomes and overall well-being of employees and training participants.

Applying theory from social support research brings greater clarity to the potential of work-centred supports for addressing both vocational and non-vocational barriers to employment and job training for disadvantaged workers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) in the Swedish establishment programme for newly arrived refugees, and how its set-up affects WISEs preconditions for social innovation.

The paper builds on a longitudinal and qualitative action research study of a WISE and its work in organising a course for labour market integration, in the context of the Swedish establishment programme. The authors were actively involved in the study as embedded researchers.

The exploration identifies a number of roles that WISEs take on in the establishment programme. It illustrates how WISEs hybrid character places participants at the centre of the innovation process, where their opinions and knowledge are considered crucial, and how this positively affects their ability to gain skills and confidence. However, the study also makes visible how issues of coordination between stakeholders in the programme lead to mismatches between course content and participant profiles, colliding activities and sporadic participation. In short, the bureaucracy embedded in labour market integration systems erodes the preconditions of WISEs to foster social innovation.

The embeddedness of the authors provides in-depth knowledge regarding how complex state systems affect WISEs in practice. Importantly, it also gives insights into the experiences of refugees, a group that is often mentioned in the literature on WISEs, although mainly in passing.

This study investigates (1) the processes through which social enterprises develop resilient organizational logics and (2) the key resilience factors in the organizational logics of successful social enterprises. The organizational logic is conceptualized here as the dynamic system of roles, rules and social expectations that result from the organization's business model, impact model and organizational form.

This study adopts an inductive approach to identify emerging resilience factors and processes in an exemplary case of social entrepreneurship (a work integration venture). The longitudinal data collection on this case took place from 2011 to 2016, based on approximately 440 h of participant observation and 10 semi-structured interviews.

The inductive analysis suggests that social enterprises develop resilient organizational logics through multi-level recursive processes of bridging institutional work. These processes enable the development of an organizational logic that is internally robust while linking distant practices, needs and expectations. The authors conceptualize these characteristics into a novel construct, the organizational logic's bridging power, which is operationalizable through two dimensions (hybridity-based and cocreation-based bridging power) and five sub-dimensions.

Like in all inductive studies, further research is needed to validate the proposed model. The new proposed construct “organizational logic's bridging power” is, interestingly, a meta-theoretical concept encouraging cross-fertilization between the literature on institutional logics and that on value cocreation.

The process development model proposed by this study highlights the importance of network-level institutional work for developing cocreation-based resilience. Furthermore, this study shows how institutional theories could be complemented with other bodies of knowledge in order to understand social enterprise resilience.

This paper aims to deal with the history and main features of social enterprises in South Korea, where a specific legal framework was enacted in 2006.

The analysis emphasises an economic sociological approach mixing economic considerations, political features and social aspects. The mobilised information comes from previous works realised by the authors on that topic as well as from updated statistics and data about policies, laws and regulations.

The study underlines that the emergence of social enterprises in South Korea was rooted in civil society and citizens' movements before it became a priority on the government's agenda. The result is the co‐existence of several forms of social enterprise with distinctive features: social enterprises certified by the official label, on the one hand, and de facto social enterprises, defined as such because of their practices, goals and values, on the other hand. Such a situation generates a growing tension between the priorities and values emphasised by the political sphere and by the civil society.

Social enterprise is an emerging field of interest and a recent phenomenon, constantly in progress; consequently, systematic data on the field are still lacking, and researchers do not have enough hindsight to learn definitive lessons and draw broad conclusions of statistical significance.

The paper sheds light on a phenomenon that is multi‐dimensional and is rapidly evolving. It provides a better comprehension of South Korean political choices and socio‐economic changes and can help to anticipate future evolutions and to shape related policies to deal with work integration and the promotion of welfare‐mix in the field of social services provision. It also brings information and learning for cross‐country comparative studies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of social enterprises in building social capital and strengthening social bonds.

The analysis is based on the comparative method. The author compares the development of social entrepreneurship of the “old” social economy (born on the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries), and of the “new” social economy (developing on the turn of twentieth and twenty-first centuries); and the functioning of social enterprises of two kinds: work integration social enterprises (WISEs) and community-based social enterprises (CBSEs). Moreover, he distinguishes between economic and social re-integration; and reciprocity and vertical inclusion.

The paper presents WISEs and CBSEs as tools of two different activation programmes: WISEs improve the employability of individuals who are marginalized in the labour market, while CBSEs serve as vehicles for the socio-economic development of the marginalized communities and territories. Furthermore, the author clarifies two methods of inclusion: through strengthening horizontal social ties (realized mainly by CBSEs, with their mutuality principle as a basis for building relations between participants) and building vertical social bonds (mainly by WISEs, based on the “inclusion of excluded” formula).

The paper stresses the importance of focusing research into social entrepreneurship on the role of social enterprises in shaping social bonds as well as using and producing of social capital of two main types: bonding and bridging.

Recommendations for managing social enterprises as hybrid entities. The author argues that the most effective approach (in producing social value-added) is to combine the formula of the re-integration of individuals excluded from the labour market with the efforts to develop the whole local communities from marginalized territories.

The author uses sociological perspectives in analysing economic entities and activation policies.

The purpose of the present study was to advance a theoretical understanding of the mechanisms by which WISEs can influence the stigma associated with mental illness. Many people with serious mental illnesses want to work, but despite much attention to work entry strategies, unemployment rates remain exceptionally high among this population. Stigma has been identified as a particularly pernicious barrier to the full community participation of people with mental illnesses. If work integration social enterprises (WISE) are to positively impact the full community participation of people with mental illnesses, then addressing stigma will be integral to their operation.

A comparative case study approach was used to address the following research questions: “How is the stigma of mental illness experienced in the everyday operations of WISE?” and “What influence do WISEs have on the stigma of mental illness within the workplace and beyond?” Five established WISEs that pay workers at minimum wage or better were selected for inclusion. The maximum variation sample included WISEs that varied in terms of geographical location, form of commerce, business size, revenues and degree of connection with mental health systems and local communities. Data analysis was conducted in four stages using qualitative methods.

The study findings suggest processes by which WISEs can positively impact the stigma of mental illness. Three social processes are associated with the potential of WISE to contribute to stigma reduction: perception of legitimacy, perception of value and perception of competence. Each of these social processes is fueled by underlying tensions in practice that arise in the context of negotiating the dual goals of the business.

This study advances theoretical understanding of the ways in which stigma may be perpetuated or reduced in WISE by revealing the social processes and practice tensions that may be associated with operation choices made by WISEs and their partners. Further research would be required to determine if the processes described actually lead to reduced stigma. Although efforts were made to select WISEs that demonstrate a variety of features, it is likely that some important features were absent. Additional research could further explore the findings identified here with WISEs from other sectors, including youth and workers with transient or less severe forms of illness. This work should be replicated internationally to explore how contextual factors may influence individual and public perceptions.

The findings provide guidance for WISE developers in the mental health sector concerning strategies that may help mitigate the development of stigmatizing features within a social enterprise and by extension improve the work experience and workforce integration of employees. The identification of these processes and tensions can be used to advance the development of consensus principles and standards in the WISE field and contribute to ongoing evaluation and research.

WISEs have the potential to reduce stigma, an important goal to support their efforts to improve employment and integration outcomes for people with mental illnesses. Through their business structures and operations they may be able to impact stigma by positively influencing perceptions of legitimacy, value and competence – all issues that have been associated with public assumptions about mental illness that sustain stigma.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to specifically focus on stigma in the WISE sector, particularly as it relates to the work integration of persons with mental illnesses. The findings provide a range of theoretical and practical implications for future development in the field and highlight factors that merit consideration more broadly in the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the potential fruitfulness of the theory of Alasdair MacIntyre for understanding how social enterprises may facilitate well-being, using empirical evidence from doctoral research to illustrate this.

This paper is based on findings from research conducted at a mental health training and employment organisation which used gardening as rehabilitative tool. Participant observation and semi-structured interviews with staff, volunteers and service users were used to generate the data, a MacIntyrean lens used to analyse the data, and some suggestions are made as to why social enterprises may be particularly suited to such an approach.

Practitioners encouraged the seeking of “internal goods” or “goods of excellence” within practices, as it was this which was understood to facilitate well-being. Service users shared in this view, perceiving their time on the case site primarily as “work” and choosing to engage with the service out of a desire to meaningfully contribute to the community project.

This research is conducted on a small scale and therefore lacks generalisability. The lack of comparison with other organisational forms using the same practice is also a limitation.

This theory offers an alternative lens for considering how social enterprises might contribute to well-being. The data presented here also complement the growing body of research literature on Work Integration Social Enterprises, considering some of the wider well-being benefits beyond work integration, which thus far has received limited empirical attention.