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Social Enterprise

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

  • 38 Accesses

Synonyms

Social business; Social business venture; Social economy enterprise; Social entrepreneurial venture; Social entrepreneurship organization

Definition

Social enterprise is a common term describing the activity of various organizations, projects, and ventures that pursue a social mission by using market mechanisms (Chell 2007; Haugh 2006; Mair 2010; Okano 2019). The reason for its existence is to solve or reduce and mitigate social problems, meet social needs, and initiate social change (Austin et al. 2006). At the same time, a social enterprise is characterized by market orientation, innovation, proactivity, risk-taking, and bottom-up, autonomous status (Lumpkin et al. 2013; Sullivan Mort et al. 2003). This type of organization is oriented toward creating a mixed value consisting of economic, social, and environmental value – known as multiple bottom lines, triple bottom line, or double bottom line (Bibby 2002; Emerson 2003; Thompson and Doherty 2006) (see “Triple Bottom Line”).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cracow University of Economics, Cracow, Poland

    Agnieszka Pacut

Authors
  1. Agnieszka Pacut
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Correspondence to Agnieszka Pacut .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Eila Jeronen Ph.D.

  2. Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Eila Jeronen Ph.D.

  3. Faculty of Education, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Eila Jeronen Ph.D.

  4. Tampere, Finland

    Eila Jeronen Ph.D.

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Pacut, A. (2022). Social Enterprise. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_374-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_374-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

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