On processes of cooptation of social enterprising agenda! the scale, dependency and financial viability traps

Sazzad Parwez () and Rajiv Ranjan
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Sazzad Parwez: Woxsen University
Rajiv Ranjan: Integral University

International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, 2025, vol. 22, issue 2, No 9, 439-463

Abstract: Abstract This study explores how the neo-liberal agenda co-opts the socio-economic change initiatives of social enterprises, particularly in the context of scaling up, funding dependencies, and financial viability challenges. Even though the role of profit-oriented business firms is desirable, they often pose an imperative threat to social enterprises' socio-economic change agenda. The governance of social enterprises tends to move from the agenda of social change to profit. This study examines this with the shifting roles of state, market, and civil society actors in influencing the agenda of social enterprises and proposes strategies to preserve their autonomy, ensuring they remain effective agents of socio-economic transformation. The present study takes the route of the qualitative approach of the netnographic with inferences from multi-case study analysis. Even though social enterprises have emerged as important institutions to solve issues at the bottom of the pyramid and to make behavior change an inherent tension in this approach remains. This largely requires the effort of scaling up social enterprising initiatives which tend to crowd out socio-economic change or welfare agenda. This study provides insight into the processes of co-optation of social enterprising efforts by the neo-liberal agenda. The process of co-optation largely takes place via scale, dependency, and financial viability traps. This converts social enterprises into social service mediators rather than real socio-economic change agents.

Keywords: Social Enterprise; Socio-economic change; Cooptation; Traps; Scale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s12208-025-00432-1

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