ABSTRACT
The social policy agenda in the decades to come will be marked by a situation where the population on a global scale is ageing, but also, at least in Europe, most likely by a policy context where public budgets for social service such as health, education and welfare, including social work practice dealing with social exclusion, poverty, personal service, post-disaster intervention and work integration, will be put under increasing pressure (Pestoff, 2009; Bureau of European Policy Advisers [BEPA], 2010). This emergent situation represents a societal urgency requiring the engagement of all sectors of society to combat and address these critical challenges. Social economy is well positioned as a third sector to play a core role in meeting this urgency. Especially European scholars have claimed that the social economy is an important factor to take into consideration when defining a third sector (Evers and Laville, 2004). Thus, since the beginning of the 1990s, social enterprise has emerged and matured as an alternative type of business strategy drawing upon elements of entrepreneurship and solidarity from the heritage of the early cooperative movement.
