Social Economy Science Transforming the Economy and Making Society More Resilient

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Lack of progress in the area of global sustainable development and difficulties in crisis management highlight the need to transform the economy and find new ways of making society more resilient. The social economy is increasingly recognized as a driver of such transformations; it comprises traditional forms of cooperative or solidarity-based organizations alongside new phenomena such as impact investing or social tech ventures that aim to contribute to the public good. Social Economy Science provides the first comprehensive analysis of why and how social economy organizations create superior value for society. The book draws on organizational theory and transition studies to provide a systematic perspective on complex multi-stakeholder forms of action. It discusses the social economy's role in promoting innovation for impact, as well as its role as an agent of societal change and as a partner to businesses, governments, and citizens.

Gorgi Krlev, Assistant Professor of Sustainability, ESCP Business School, Paris,Dominika Wruk, Assistant Professor for Sustainable Entrepreneurship, University of Mannheim,Giulio Pasi, Professor of Economics, Universidad Loyola, Seville,Marika Bernhard, Sustainability Lead, DFL (German Football Association)

Gorgi Krlev is Assistant Professor of Sustainability at ESCP Business School in Paris. He also holds a Visiting Professorship at the Politecnico di Milano and a Visiting Fellow position at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. In his research he deals with social entrepreneurship, social innovations, and impact. His work has won numerous awards, including a best book award from the Academy of Management's Public and Nonprofit Division, the Roman Herzog Institute's 2021 Award for innovative contributions to the social market economy, and the International Society for Third Sector Research's 2022 policy impact award.


Dominika Wruk is Assistant Professor for Sustainable Entrepreneurship at the University of Mannheim. She has been leading the platforms2share research group, focussed on platform cooperatives and funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research, for several years. She led the i-share project consortium, in which she was also responsible for analysing the social, ecological, and economic effects of the sharing economy. She has also held a position as a SCANCOR Visiting Researcher at Stanford University.

Giulio Pasi is a member of the Advisory Board of the Bureau of Entrepreneurial Finance at the University of Turin and Professor of Economics at the Universidad Loyola in Seville. He has served as Scientific Officer at the European Commission Joint Research Centre, leading the work on social innovation, new financial engineering, and the relationships between public policy and new markets or industries, as well as the impact of digital transformation. He is the author of about 60 publications and is a globally recognized expert in the field of impact investing. He has been a keynote speaker at events organized by the OECD, the World Economic Forum, and the Global Steering Group on Impact Investing (former G8-taskforce).

Marika Bernhard is Sustainability Lead at DFL (German Football Association). She is also the founder and chairwoman of Social Entrepreneurship Baden-Württemberg (SocEnt BW), a network organization supporting impact driven ventures across Germany. She initiated the Social Innovation Summit, which after many years of running successfully as an entrepreneurial endeavour, merged existing efforts and partnerships, including with the European Commission, to become the Social Economy Science Conference in 2021.

1. Why should we care about social economy science?, Gorgi Krlev, Dominika Wruk, Giulio Pasi, and Marika Bernhard
2. Public policies to advance the social economy, François Bonnici and Veerle Klijn
3. Social economy: Between common identity and accelerating social change, Gorgi Krlev, Dominika Wruk, Giulio Pasi, and Marika Bernhard
4. The joint search for new approaches with a public good benefit: Four strategies and the role of social economy organizations, Marieke Huysentruyt
5. The social economy and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: The risks of marginalization and how to avoid them, Geoff Mulgan
6. Financial market transformations for investing in social impact, Alex Nicholls and Jarrod Ormiston
7. How impact measurement fosters the social economy: From measurement to impact of learning and management for impact, Lisa Hehenberger and Leonora Buckland
8. Beyond a niche approach: Could social business become the norm?, Julie Battilana, Leszek Krol, Alexandra Ubalijoro, and Kara Sheppard-Jones
9. Empowering knowledge and training in higher education as a lever for social economy ecosystems, Rocío Nogales-Muriel and Marthe Nyssens
10. Social economy resilience facing the Covid-19 crisis: Facts and prospects, Rafael Chaves-Avila and Angel Soler-Guillem
11. How social innovation practices of the social economy promote development in Africa, Ruth Brännvall
12. The centrality of social-tech entrepreneurship in an inclusive growth agenda, Mario Calderini, Veronica Chiodo, Francesco Gerli, and Giulio Pasi
13. Why and how to engage beneficiaries as co-(social) entrepreneurs? Considering hardware, software, and orgware for citizen engagement, Anne-Karen Hueske, Willemine Willems, and Kai Hockerts
14. Civic leadership for a transformative social economy: A comparison of city leadership constellations in Italy and the UK, Alessandro Sancino, Michela Pagani, Luigi Corvo, Alessandro Braga, and Fulvio Scognamiglio
15. Public structural funds as a catalyst for social innovation: The experience of Portugal Social Innovation, António Miguel
16. Social procurement to promote social problem solving, Eva Varga and Malcolm Hayday
17. Social outcomes contracting: Seeing a more relational approach to contracts between government and the social economy?, Eleanor Carter and Nigel Ball
18. Conclusions, Gorgi Krlev, Dominika Wruk, Giulio Pasi, and Marika Bernhard