Some reasons why we do not have a common set of definitions

I will apologise up front but this quote was one of the most important findings of the ECOTEC Economic Consultants evaluation of the European Union’s ‘Third System & Employment Pilot’ from the late 1990’s.

‘One perhaps disappointing aspect of the Pilot Action is that there are few examples where production models originated in one project show much likelihood of being adopted by other organisations or by other sectors…the contextual specificity of projects, combined with the lack of clear focus on the input and output equation has in practice undermined the wider replicability of the individual models which were put into operation.’
(ECOTEC, 2001, 71)

So why can we not replicate good social enterprise models from one country to another. The answer relates to institutional, social, historical and cultural ‘embeddedness’. Lots of big words but based on a simple reality. Social enterprises operate in their national, regional and local environs. Thus, social enterprises or the local social economy has developed within these frameworks. As the cultural, social, historical and institutional frameworks in different countries are, by definition, different then the local social enterprise models have evolved within these local legal frameworks, social norms and historical underpinnings.

Thus, in Western Europe social enterprises have developed within the framework of the changing social welfare systems in different countries, in Central and Eastern Europe social enterprises, especially the co-operate movements, have evolved from the collapse of the old Soviet system and in the United States social enterprises have evolved from the free market ethos of that society and the lack of a comprehensive social welfare system.

Thus, the sad outcome of this discourse so far has been that we cannot define a common definition of the third sector, far less, a commonly acceptable definition of a social enterprise or even the social economy. The lesson may be that you must develop working definitions within the national political, economic and academic frameworks for each country. The problem being that getting a common definition at a national level between practitioners, policy makers and academics has proven to be easier said then done. Each is trying to define the social enterprise phenomenon from different perspectives and at heart this is the definitional problem for social enterprises.

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