ABSTRACT
One of the objectives of the European Science Foundation’s exploratory workshop, “The Third Sector in a Changing Europe: Key Trends and Challenges”, was to move forward in our understanding of the concept of social enterprise”. Osborne (2006) formulated the following question: what role(s) do/should third sector organisations play in the provision of public services – and is social enterprise a core element of this role or a distraction? Nyssen (2006b) citing Defourny (2001) responded: “Social enterprise does not represent a conceptual break with institutions of the third sector but rather a new dynamic within it – encompassing both newly-created organisations and older ones which have undergone an evolution”. In the course of the last ten years the term “social enterprise” has come to be used more and more frequently but with diverse meanings. Kerlin (2006) did a comparative analysis of the different meanings that the term takes in the US and in Europe. In this chapter the meaning adopted by the EMES Network will be used.3
