The Economics of Social Responsibility: The World of Social Enterprises

ISBN-13: 9780415465762 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 272 str.

Carlo Borzaga;Leonardo Becchetti

Opis

This book offers a rethinking of the burgeoning research on not-for-profit organizations and socially responsible economics. Adopting a comparative approach, the chapters explore and reinterpret the impact of social enterprises on the provision of general-interest services, work integration, microfinance, and fair trade, and show how these enterprises form the hub of an emerging economy of social responsibility. The book provides a new interpretation of social enterprises as entrepreneurial organizations that pursue social objectives and are successful due to the non-self-seeking motives of their members. This book will be of interest to postgraduate students, professionals working in the not-for-profit sector, and scholars interested in socially responsible economics. It is particularly suitable for seminars and workshops focusing on the management of not-for-profit organizations, sustainable development, and globalization.

The crisis of welfare systems coupled with difficulties in public financing and global integration of financial, product and labour markets are generating a transition in which the old system of check and balances (involving corporations, domestic institutions and domestic workers’ association) has changed into a new “three pillar” system in which bottom-up action of (a minority of) socially responsible individuals compensates for the weakness of domestic institutions and the lack of new global governance rules.

This book provides new and original research on social entrerepeurship: consumers and investors voting with their portfolio and groups of citizens setting up enterprises without a profit goal, thus extending democratic participation beyond the exercise of electoral vote and thereby contributing to the rise of a fuller economic democracy. The specific fields which are extensively discussed in the book (fair trade, socially responsible consumption, socially responsible finance, evolution of welfare systems with bottom-up entrepreneurial actions) are new and original and with great future potential.

Spis treści

Introduction Leonardo Becchetti and Carlo and Carlo Borzaga  1. The economics of social enterprises: an interpretive framework Carlo Borzaga and Ermanno Tortia  2. The competitive advantages of social enterprises Sara Depedri  3. The impact of social enterprises on output, employment, and welfare Ermanno Tortia  4. From economic growth to sustainable development Leonardo Becchetti and Giuseppe Mastromatteo  5. The provision of welfare and general-interest services Luca Fazzi  6. Social enterprises and the integration of disadvantaged workers Giulia Galera  7. The fair-trade debate and its underpinnings Leonardo Becchetti  8. An empirical test of fair trade Leonardo Becchetti and Marco Costantino  9. Microfinance: a frontier social enterprise Leonardo Becchetti  10. Only the fittest survive? A test of the sustainability of corporate social responsibility Leonardo Becchetti and Rocco Ciciretti