Cultural dimensions of social enterprises. An analytical model

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical model for research into the sociocultural dimensions of social enterprises. The need to develop such models is due to the great variety of organizations currently summarized under the term «social enterprise». The model suggested in this contribution complements some of the existing academic definitions of social enterprises with sociocultural theories, such as Weber’s notion of «rationality», the «welfare regimes» announced by Esping-Andersen and the «social types» developed by Mary Douglas. I combine these concepts on two axes. The first axis is the social scale (at micro, meso and macro level) and includes the internal organization, legal characteristics and welfare state context of the social enterprise. The second axis is the «cultural type» underpinning the different scales of axis one: the bureaucratic-hierarchical, the commercial-individualistic and the traditional-communitarian.