IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/anr/reveco/v15y2023p41-62.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Organization of Social Enterprises

Author

Listed:
  • Robert H. Gertner

    (Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA)

Abstract

Growing interest in the role of business entities in addressing social problems highlights the potential of social enterprises—organizations that cover all or most of their costs through revenue-generating business and have an objective to address a societal problem. A social enterprise can be an efficient and effective way to create social value by internalizing externalities, exploiting complementarities with commercial activities, providing better prices or quality to disadvantaged customers, and reducing the need for scarce philanthropic support. The challenges of managing an organization for financial success and social impact may limit their potential. Social enterprises can be for-profit or nonprofit organizations. The legal and institutional structure of for-profit and nonprofit governance and financing makes it challenging for a social entrepreneur to find a business model and organization structure to succeed.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert H. Gertner, 2023. "The Organization of Social Enterprises," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 15(1), pages 41-62, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:anr:reveco:v:15:y:2023:p:41-62
    DOI: 10.1146/annurev-economics-082222-075249
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics-082222-075249
    Download Restriction: Full text downloads are only available to subscribers. Visit the abstract page for more information.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1146/annurev-economics-082222-075249?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social enterprise; nonprofits; social entrepreneurship; public benefit corporations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • K22 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Business and Securities Law
    • L31 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social Entrepreneurship
    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
    • L38 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:anr:reveco:v:15:y:2023:p:41-62. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: http://www.annualreviews.org (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.annualreviews.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.