Stakeholders self‐organization and adaptive governance in social enterprises: Membership representation, worker control and client orientation

Ermanno C. Tortia

Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2025, vol. 42, issue 2, 396-410

Abstract: The article uses elements of complexity theory, social systems theory, and new institutionalism to analyse stakeholder self‐organization in Italian non‐profit social enterprises. Organizational development goes through an evolutionary process of trial and error, in which stakeholder self‐organization produces governance rules and routines to achieve adaptation and resilience in a changing socioeconomic environment. Survey data regarding social cooperatives, which are prevalent in Italy as a form of social enterprise, display how diverse stakeholders engage in self‐organization and self‐positioning within key governance bodies of membership and board of directors. The results demonstrate that in the absence of investor ownership, producers, especially paid staff but also volunteer workers, assume the main responsibility for decision‐making and control. Client orientation, the production of economic and social value in favour of customers and users, is achieved in a context of high relational intensity through participation in the co‐production and co‐creation of services, as well as the pooling of non‐commercial resources and favourable price discrimination, less through participation in decision‐making and control. This emerging evolutionary pattern can support the development of new organizational and business models for social enterprises.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.3005

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:srbeha:v:42:y:2025:i:2:p:396-410

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1092-7026

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Systems Research and Behavioral Science from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().