Social Business Economy versus Social Political Economy: The Social Firm in perspective

Économie sociale d'entreprise versus Économie sociale politique: La firme sociale en perspective

Patrick Gianfaldoni ()
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Patrick Gianfaldoni: LBNC - Laboratoire Biens, Normes, Contrats - AU - Avignon Université

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Abstract: In France, thestructuring of the social and Solidarity Economy (ESS) is the result of two long-term dynamics: the consolidation of a Historical Social Economy (ESH), composed of large cooperatives, associations and mutuals, throughout the 20th century; the emergence, during the 1970s-2000, of a New Social Economy (NES) composed above all of new generation cooperatives and associations.Social Political Economy (SPE) refers to the two thought currents attached to ESH and NES, whose legitimacy is based on a convergence of their academic production and institutional recognition.The process of isomorphism-banalisation, which over the decades has affected companies adjacent to the cooperative, mutellist and associationist movements, has been helped by the gradual erosion of the key principles of SPE (non-profit-making, dual quality, free membership, democratic governance).Employer associations have thus been exposed in recent years to the rapid diffusion-extension of entrepreneurial and managerial standards.The State promotes a new tutelary/competitive order through the dissemination of control-evaluation rules and the introduction of public quasi-markets.This evolution corresponds to a transmutation of SPE, which reveals the attributes of a Social Business Economy(SBE).Constituting a third sector distinct from the market-capitalist economy and the public economy, SBEhas been confirmed by the creation of a Nonprofit Sector composed of non-profit organizations (NPOs).NPOs are mainly employer associations in France.Starting from the economic Market and State failures, neo-institutionalist theory provides rational explanations for the presence of private non-profit organizations with a social/societal vocation.A similar theoretical argument highlights the institutional failures of NPOs, leading to a renewed conception of Social Business Economy (SBE)and the emergence of the socialfirm category.Therefore, the purpose of our contribution is to examine the model of the social firm in relation to SBE.This perspective leads to the presentation of different social enterprise figures as possible variations.Our approach leads to the complex transformations analysis of the Social Political Economy into a Social Business Economy.

Keywords: Neo-Institutionalist Theory; Non-profit Organizations (NPOs); Social Firm; Social Political Economy; Social Business Economy; Economie sociale d’entreprise; économie sociale politique; firme sociale; organismesà but non lucratif; théorienéo-institutionnaliste (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-06-03
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Published in 9e Congrès International de l’AFEP 2019 / Penser l’économie de demain et le futur de l’économie politique, Jun 2019, Lille, France

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