During the last two decades social enterprises have acquired an increasing importance both within the academia and in the real world as an example of efficient enterprise, able to manage the emerging economic and social challenges. When we talk about social enterprises (SEs), we refer to nonprofit organizations pursuing a social objective through an economic activity. Social Cooperatives (cooperative sociali) in Italy, Collective Interest Companies (Société coopérative d’intérêt) in France, Social initiative cooperatives (Cooperativas de iniciativa social – CIS) in Spain are examples of SEs.
The webinar will analyse the main characteristics of SEs and their potential for competitiveness that could represent a pattern to develop a future economic activity.
In particular the session will explore the example of Italian social cooperatives by answering the following three main questions: what are social enterprises? what are the main futures of SEs? how is it possible to develop a SE?
The meaning of Social Enterprise for the economic and social development
Relator: Mr. Simone Poledrini
Adjunct Professor of Management of Innovation, Department of Economics - University of PerugiaItaly
Simone Poledrini is an Adjunct Professor of Management of Innovation at the Department of Economics at the University of Perugia in Italy. He holds both a PhD (University of Perugia, Italy) and a M.Sc. (University of Sussex, UK) in Management of Innovation. His research interest is nonprofit with a particular focus on civil society organizations and social enterprises. Simone is currently involved in the CostAction research Project “EMPOWER-SE”, while he was previously involved in the ICSEM Project (International Comparative Social Enterprise Models) where he was part of the Italian team. He spent some time as visiting researcher in European universities research centers, such as the Centre d'Economie Sociale (Centre for Social Economy) of the University of Liège in Belgium, and the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain. Simone’s lecturing experience is in the field of Management of Innovation and Nonprofit Organizations. Since 2010 he has been teaching Management of Innovation at a master level at the University of Perugia.
