Fair Trade Organizations and Social Enterprise: Social Innovation through Hybrid Organization Models

by Huybrechts; Benjamin

• ISBN13: 9780415517454
• ISBN10: 0415517451
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-03-21
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

For several decades, Fair Trade Social Enterprises, or FTSEs, have been pioneers in the conception and implementation of a still relatively new concept “ Fair Trade (FT) “ creating a movement which has challenged mainstream trading practices and offered development opportunities for disadvantaged producer groups in the South. Starting from a niche market aimed at convinced customers, FT has expanded and entered mainstream retailing outlets, growing in visibility and market share, while simultaneously experiencing internal debates and divisions. While pioneer FTSEs in the early years were largely nonprofit organizations relying on voluntary work, FTSEs have become increasingly diversified in terms of organizational models and strategies. Indeed, FTSEs have adopted diverse types of legal forms and governance models, experimenting with various and often innovative combinations of the multiple dimensions of FT: the commercial activity (trading of FT products), the social mission (support to producers), and the explicit or implicit political message (often expressed through education and advocacy). This book builds a typology of FTSEs based on their organizational models and strategies. This typology is built thanks to an empirical study including 57 FTSEs across Europe. Author Benjamin Huybrechts further examines how the different types of FTSEs combine the economic, social, and political dimensions of FT, and how they manage the possible tensions between these dimensions. Finally, Fair Trade Social Enterprisesproposes a range of theoretical approaches allowing for various interpretations of the diversity among FTSEs as well as the links between the organizational models and the strategies that these models enable.