The Growth of Organizational Variety in Market Economies: The Case of Social Enterprises

Carlo Borzaga, Sara Depedri and Ermanno Tortia

No 1003, Euricse Working Papers from Euricse (European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises)

Abstract: Institutional and organizational variety is increasingly characterising advanced economic systems. While traditional economic theories have focussed almost exclusively on profit-maximizing (i.e. for-profit) enterprises and on publicly-owned organizations, the increasing relevance of non-profit organizations, and especially of social enterprises, requires scientists to reflect on a new comprehensive economic approach for explaining this organizational variety. The paper examines the main limitations of the orthodox and institutional theories and comes to assert the need for creating and testing a new theoretical framework, which considers the way in which diverse enterprises pursue their goals, the diverse motivations driving actors and organizations, and the different learning patterns and routines within organizations. The new framework of analysis proposed in the paper draws upon recent developments in the theories of the firm, institutional evolution, and motivational complexity to explain the presence of diverse types of organizations on a continuum ranging from purely for-profit and commercial forms to socially-oriented entrepreneurial ones. (La variet istituzionale ed organizzativa sta sempre pi caratterizzando le economie avanzate. Mentre le teorie economiche tradizionali hanno tuttavia focalizzato l attenzione esclusivamente sulle imprese che massimizzano il profitto (tipicamente le for-profit) e sulle organizzazioni pubbliche, la crescente importanza, in questi ultimi anni, delle organizzazioni nonprofit e specialmente delle imprese sociali sta richiedendo agli studiosi di ripensare un approccio economico capace di spiegare questa variet organizzativa. Il presente articolo spiega i principali limiti della teoria ortodossa e delle teoria neo-istitizionalista e giunge ad affermare la necessit di creare e testare una nuova teoria economica che consideri le diversit negli obiettivi delle organizzazioni, le differenze nelle motivazioni degli attori economici e delle organizzazioni stesse, le differenti modalit di apprendimento e di generazione di routine all interno delle organizzazioni. Il nuovo contesto di analisi proposto attinge ad alcuni recenti sviluppi delle analisi economiche dell impresa ed in particolare all evoluzione delle istituzioni e alla complessit motivazionale, giungendo a delineare la presenza di diverse tipologie organizzative lungo un continuum che va dalle organizzazioni interessate esclusivamente alla massimizzazione del profitto (for-profit) alle organizzazione orientate al benessere sociale.)

Keywords: Social enterprises; organizational pluralism; neo-institutional economics; behavioral economics; organizational continuum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J81 L31 P50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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