ABSTRACT
An overall evaluation of the role performed by social enterprises in supplying general-interest services is hampered by national and international accounting systems, which mainly measure the size and economic contribution of the forprofit and public sectors. These systems tend to perpetuate what Monzon and Chaves (2008: 549) call the ‘institutional invisibility’ of social enterprises. Moreover, findings vary greatly according to the definition of social enterprise adopted (Bouchard et al. 2006). National censuses are particularly susceptible to this problem of classification. In Sweden, for example, Wijkström et al. (2004) studied the language used in the central government’s budget to describe thirdsector organizations and found that more that 110 different collective nouns were applied to 27 different areas of expenditure. A wide variety of terms is also used to refer to the concept of social enterprise in the scientific literature. In a recent study, Kerlin (2006) highlights differences in terminology between European and North American researchers, while in Europe itself diverse traditions and legal systems pose obstacles for a shared definition (Defourny and Nyssens 2008). Consequently, organizations may be classified as social enterprises according to researchers’ interests, the characteristics of organizations, or other criteria of convenience. Even in countries where explicit legal definitions exist, some organizations that function as social enterprises may still not be counted as such for administrative reasons. A description of social enterprises providing general-interest services is therefore fraught with contradictions and information gaps. Given these difficulties, this chapter overviews a broad range of organizations from traditional nonprofits to forms of social cooperatives that may partially distribute their profits. Further research based on more rigorous concepts and methods is clearly needed to fill in the details. Against this backdrop, the chapter is organized as follows. The first section defines general-interest services and describes the role played by not-for-profit organizations generally and social enterprises specifically in the production of these services. This section then analyses differences in the distribution and role of social enterprises across countries, highlighting the main patterns from a comparative perspective. The second section analyses the factors that have influenced the development and spread of social enterprises. The third section
identifies the main difficulties and challenges faced by the further expansion and consolidation of social enterprises providing general-interest services.
