La presente tesi è stata dedicata all’analisi della disciplina italiana della società benefit, introdotta con la legge del 28 dicembre 2015, n. 208. Lo studio parte da una preliminare analisi comparata finalizzata alla ricerca di tendenze uniformi di sviluppo, nel panorama europeo e statunitense, della regolamentazione della c.d. social enterprise, intesa come l’impresa connotata da un’ibridazione tra scopo di lucro e caratteri di socialità. La società benefit italiana sembra collocarsi in questo contesto come una social enterprise “all’americana” trattandosi di un’impresa in cui l’ibridazione tra lucro e socialità è totalmente slegata dal divieto di distribuzione degli utili. L’analisi della disciplina della società benefit, che costituisce il fulcro dell’attività di ricerca, ha riguardato in primo luogo l’inquadramento giuridico, sia in termini di effettiva necessità della sua introduzione sia in termini di distinzione della stessa rispetto alle società “non benefit”. La tesi sostenuta in questa trattazione è che la società benefit colma una lacuna presente nell’ordinamento e si contrappone alle società lucrative ordinarie in una più che ragionevole divisione dei ruoli, essendo dotata di caratteristiche le conferiscono una precisa identità. In secondo luogo, la tesi è stata dedicata ad affrontare i principali problemi interpretativi posti dalla disciplina analizzata, mantenendo come punto centrale della ricerca il tema dell’effettiva corrispondenza tra l’oggetto sociale dichiarato rispetto all’attività concretamente realizzata dalla società - tema che nelle società benefit diviene cruciale per valutare l’effettivo valore della nuova disciplina e delle iniziative sottostanti - e vagliando la compatibilità degli strumenti di controllo offerti dal diritto societario con le specifiche caratteristiche della società benefit. / This thesis has been dedicated to the analysis of the Italian “società benefit”, introduced with the Law no. 208 of 28th December 2015. The study starts from a preliminary comparative analysis aimed at researching uniform trends - in the European and US panorama - in the development of social enterprises’ regulation, i.e. those corporate enterprise forms characterized by hybridization between profit and "sociality" features. The Italian “società benefit” seems to place in this context as an “American” form of social enterprise, as the hybridization between profit and sociality is completely disconnetted from any non-distribution constraint. The analysis of the discipline of the “società benefit”, which constitutes the fulcrum of the research activity, has concerned primarily the legal framework, both in terms of the actual need for its introduction and in terms of distinction of the same with respect to the companies "not-benefit”. The thesis supported in this dissertation is that the “società benefit” fills a gap in the legal system and opposes ordinary lucrative companies in a more than reasonable division of roles, being equipped with features that give it a precise identity in the legal system. Secondly, the thesis has been dedicated to addressing the main interpretative problems emerged by the analyzed discipline, keeping as the central point of research the theme of the actual correspondence between the social object declared with respect to the activity concretely carried out by the company - a theme that in the “società benefit” becomes crucial for assessing the effective value of the new discipline and the underlying initiatives - and assessing the compatibility of the control instruments offered by company law with the specific characteristics of the “società benefit”.

Community-based tourism (CBT), according to Dodds, R. Ali, A. & Galaski, K. (2016), has historically been developed based on a host community’s assets and objectives due to the fact that the "core of CBT planning has been to determine how best to use it as a development tool." As a result, the established CBT development model typically prioritizes community potential as supply at the expense of the market potential of tourism (demand), disregarding to a certain extent the commercial aspects of tourism. From this perspective, questions regarding product strategy, idea generation, business analysis, and how cross-sectoral knowledge production and exchange can strengthen the sustainability and viability of the CBT product have not yet been fully answered in academic literature. This paper builds on the academic literature regarding market access and is further supported by interviews and participant observation conducted in Brazil. This research indicates that these analyses should be complemented with additional questions about product development, capacity-building, knowledge co-production, collaborative networking, and more. The business life cycle of CBT could be considered a foundational pillar in understanding the business viability of community-based tourism projects, and therefore, the expected findings of this study include the proposal of an amended CBT model and practical recommendations that may be implemented into existing CBT projects. / Le tourisme communautaire (CBT), selon Dodds, R. Ali, A. et Galaski, K. (2016), a été largement développé sur la base des atouts et des objectifs d'une communauté en raison du fait que le en raison du fait que “le cœur de la planification de le tourisme communautaire a été de déterminer la meilleure façon de l'utiliser comme outil de développement” (p. 16). En conséquence, le développement du CBT a donné la priorité au potentiel communautaire (offre) au détriment du potentiel touristique (demande), sans tenir compte, dans une certaine mesure, des aspects commerciaux du tourisme. Dans cette perspective, les questions concernant la stratégie de produit, la génération d'idées, l'analyse commerciale et les moyens par lesquels la production et l'échange de connaissances intersectorielles peuvent renforcer la durabilité et la viabilité du produit CBT n'ont pas encore trouvé de réponse complète dans la littérature universitaire. Bien que les analyses concernant l'accès aux marchés soient abondantes dans la littérature (Dodds et al. 2016; Mitchell & Hall, 2005; Mitchell & Muckosy, 2008; Forstner, 2004; Iorio & Corsale, 2014), cet article, informé par des entretiens semi-structurés et l'observation des participants menée pendant le séjour de deux ans de l'auteur au Brésil, soutient que ces analyses devraient être complétées par des questions supplémentaires sur le développement de produits, la formation des capacités, la coproduction de connaissances, le réseautage collaboratif et plus encore. Le cycle de vie des entreprises du tourisme communautaire pourrait être considéré comme un pilier fondamental de la compréhension de la viabilité commerciale des projets de tourisme communautaire, et par conséquent, les conclusions attendues de cette étude incluent la proposition d'un modèle CBT modifié et des recommandations pratiques qui pourraient être mises en œuvre. dans les projets CBT existants. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The theme of the social economy is currently very topical at EU level and therefore in its member states. The emphasisis is on supporting development of social economy, because creates new jobs and leads to economic growth. The thesis aim is to describe the forms of promotion the social economy by EU institutions and their bodies, which is provided in the context of EU employment policy in period 2010-2015. The thesis identifies both forms of support and also justificatin in documents of european institutions and the supprort of social economy in Czech Republic.

Bussiness plan design for a social enterprise The thesis deals with the proposal of a business plan for Mineral Bangle, which produces jewelry and accessories from mineral stones. The company financially supports Farní charita in Roudnice nad Labem and 10 % of profits goes for children's and youth's trips from low-threshold facilities. The company is in the market for the third year and intends to be transformed into a social enterprise to make a greater contribution to the society. The aim of the thesis is to contribute to the development and transformation of the already functioning company into a social enterprise by creating a business plan that will be used in the grant application and will also serve as an inspiration for other students whom are social businesses closer than ordinary business. The business plan will be compiled including an analysis of the external and internal environment, analysis of company statistics, mapping of the business environment, identification of strengths and weaknesses, elaboration of marketing, financial plan and risk management plan. The plan contains description of conditions under which a social enterprise could operate. The diploma thesis can be considered as a methodology of business planning for a particular social enterprise. Key words: Social economic....

Embedding social and financial goals into investment decisions and organizational missions is an increasing hallmark of social finance, a rapidly growing phenomenon that aims to create sustainable solutions to some of society’s largest challenges such as poverty alleviation (Mosley & Hulme, 1998; Burgess & Pande, 2005; Beck et al. 2007a), wealth inequality (Buera et al. 2014; Lagoarde-Segot, 2017) and environmental preservation (Nicholls & Pharoah, 2008) among others (Benedikter, 2011). In recent years, the concept of social finance has emerged through applications such as venture philanthropy (Moody, 2008; Scarlata & Alemany, 2010), socially responsible investing (Renneboog et al. 2008; Nofsinger & Varma, 2014; Gutiérrez-Nieto et al. 2016), impact investing (Bugg-Levine & Emerson, 2011; Höchstädter & Scheck, 2015), corporate social responsibility (Falck & Heblich, 2007; Jha & Cox, 2015), crowdfunding sites that appeal to the charitable intentions of retail investors (Lehner, 2013; Lehner & Nicholls, 2014) and microfinance (Morduch, 1999; Beck et al. 2007b; Armendáriz & Labie, 2011). The microfinance industry is particularly suited to explore the nuances of social finance due to the wide range of actors present in the sector, including not only public, private and nonprofit actors (D’Espallier et al. 2016) but also a wide range of investor profiles including commercial rate, concessionary and fully donative funders (Dorfleitner et al, 2017). To meet these innovations in social finance, a substantial body of scholarly research has materialized in various areas: corporate finance (Bogan, 2012; Tchuigoua, 2014), investing (Dorfleitner et al. 2012; Brière & Szafarz, 2015), nonprofit finance (Jegers, 2011; Roberts, 2013), banking (Gutiérrez-Nieto et al. 2009; Cornée et al. 2016), entrepreneurship (Nicholls, 2010; Bruton et al. 2015), development economics (Cull et al. 2009; Ahlin et al. 2011; Hermes et al. 2011; Hartarska et al. 2013), business ethics (Sandberg et al. 2009; Arjaliès, 2010; Hudon & Sandberg, 2013), organizational theory (Battilana & Dorado, 2012; Pache & Santos, 2013), legal studies (Henderson & Malani, 2009), public economics (Duncan, 2004; Andreoni & Payne, 2011) and management studies (Cobb et al. 2016). However, these theories are often siloed within a particular domain and used separately. Despite a long research tradition on microfinance, there is still an ongoing debate on how to assess profits in a heterogeneous environment with multiple organizational objectives, the comparative advantages of public and private funders and their associated financial instruments to scale the microfinance sector and the nature of trade-offs between the financial and social objectives of microfinance institutions (MFIs). This dissertation aims to fill these gaps by analyzing social finance from an interdisciplinary perspective. The aim is to further nuance our understanding of the compatibility between financial and social objectives and how the trade-off between these two elements is moderated through financial mechanisms from donors and social investors. By analyzing the dimensions where trade-offs are most acute for social enterprises, this dissertation aims to put forth a conceptual framework to help assess profitability. Our analysis focuses on the microfinance industry, which offers a rich research setting due the wide range of institutional profiles active in the sector, including nonprofit, cooperative, for-profit and government agents and its global contributions to financial inclusion, poverty reduction and female empowerment. This dissertation is structured into three chapters, each of which addresses a different research question using different methods and units of analysis. The first chapter is a meta-analysis that uses statistical analysis of empirical research results to aggregate the existing findings on social and financial performance trade-offs as they pertain to microfinance institutions. The second chapter develops a typology of subsidy and donation instruments and then proposes a conceptual model to identify the crowding-in and crowding-out effects of public and private donors on private, commercial investors. The second chapter is complemented with an empirical analysis of a Mexican MFI, Banco Compartamos, using secondary data to suggest how the evolution of funding instruments attracted private commercial capital. Chapter three constructs a conceptual framework to identify fair profits for social enterprise, focusing on the case of microfinance. We then empirically apply the conceptual framework to an international dataset of microfinance institutions. Starting from the observation that no consensus has emerged regarding performance trade-offs between the financial and social objectives of microfinance institutions, Chapter 1 – A Meta-analysis Examining the Nature of Trade-offs in Microfinance – aggregates existing research findings to determine the dimensions of MFI performance, and study characteristics, that drive the confirmation of trade-offs. Specifically, after an initial screen of 3,299 articles, 623 empirical trade-off findings from 61 studies were coded into a dataset, where each empirical finding consists of a pairwise observation between a single financial performance variable and a single social performance variable. Using a probit model to analyze the direction and statistical significance across categories of social/financial performance and study artifacts, findings suggest that depth of outreach, cost of outreach, and efficiency indicators increase the prevalence of trade-offs, while risk indicators are associated with fewer trade-offs. Profitability indicators and outreach to women are found to have no significant effect on performance trade-offs. Study characteristics suggest that using an economic frontier methodology or publishing in development journals increases the incidence of trade-offs. These results help to understand the moderating factors that drive performance trade-offs and suggest that MFI managers and stakeholders may need to make difficult decisions regarding the social goals that may need to be sacrificed to achieve financial sustainability.Chapter 2 – Crowding-in without Crowding-out: Subsidy Design to Foster Commercialization – investigates the financial mechanisms that public and private donors have at their disposal and how they can use these instruments to attract fully commercial private capital to social enterprises. In this article, we first construct a typology to explain the ways in which private donors are complementing public donors in subsidy design. We argue that specific instruments such as corporate intangibles and credit guarantees can trigger permanent crowding-in effects that attract commercial partners, while preventing perverse effects such as crowding-out and soft budget constraints. Applying the typology and investment logics to the case of Compartamos, we observe that crowding-in and crowding-out effects can be present simultaneously, which allows us to suggest that subsidies and donations do not force path dependency towards commercialization but rather co-exist, for example attracting commercial debt investment while crowding-out commercial equity. Our research could help both private and public donors identify strategies to maximize social impact while reducing perverse mutual externalities. Finally, in the presence of performance trade-offs and donor pressures to commercialize operations and scale-up, Chapter 3 – What is an acceptable level of profit for a social enterprise? Insights from Microfinance – develops a conceptual framework for fair profits in social enterprise and then applies the framework to the microfinance industry. The fair profit framework is constructed on four dimensions: the level of profitability, the extent to which the organization adheres to its social mission, the pricing and the surplus distribution of the organization. Using a global sample of MFIs, our results suggest that satisfying all four dimensions is a difficult, although not impossible task as less than 3% of the sample fulfill all four criteria. Using our framework, we suggest that excessive profits in microfinance can be better understood relative to pricing, the social outreach of an organization, and the commitment to clients over time through reduced interest rates. This dissertation provides solid scientific evidence on the compatibility between financial and social returns in social finance. Our dissertation examines social finance through the lens of microfinance, and investigates the performance trade-offs facing MFIs as well as the moderating role of financing mechanisms to help MFIs fulfill their double-bottom-line mandate. We hope we demonstrate that the unique combination of financing technicalities significantly shape the evolution of recipient organizations. Some practical implications are also identified to help practitioners, regulators and managers navigate the ongoing debate on the compatibility of financial and social returns and the design of financial instruments for social enterprise. We firmly believe that these academic works contribute and bring new perspectives to social finance in development economics, and business ethics. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The thesis deals with social entrepreneurship and its potential for integration of marginalized social groups to the labour market. Social economy and its subjects - social enterprises - participate in the market not only to obtain profit but also in order to fulfill socially beneficial objectives. The topic of social economy and supporting its subjects is currently topical in the whole European Union. It presents an alternative way of fulfilling the needs of the society which flexibly complements the instruments of public redistribution as well as private sector. Also in the Czech Republic social economy is a real phenomenon which has recently attracted many practical as well as theoretical activities. The thesis focuses on social firms as one of the types of social enterprises that create jobs for persons that are somehow disadvantaged on the labour market with the objective of their social and economic integration. In the practical part the thesis presents results of a qualitative research aimed on the impacts of the employment in the social firm "Modrý domeček" in Řevnice of a family member with a health disadvantage on his/her family. The research was conducted with members of the disadvantaged employees' families.

Bc. Pavla Svobodová: Financial resources of social enterprises - vision and reality (2012) Abstract The theme of my thesis is looking into problems with social enterprise financing. Well set up concept of social enterprise financing is equally maintained with it's importance in foreign countries as well as the Czech republic. Based on research, my aim was to find the ideal concept of social enterprise financing and to test it on a chosen sample of Czech social enterprises. In the section "Social enterprise in the third sector and its funding" I explain the overview of financial definitions of foreign social enterprise and their focus on the funding. In here I am also deciding on my own perception of this issue - well mainly the ideal funding resources for social enterprise. This section also covers a "lighter" version of the ideal concept of social enterprise financing from a Czech point of view and explains various studies focusing on social enterprise financing currently available. The empirical section focuses on analysis of financing of chosen social enterprises and verifies the ideal concept in the Czech republic. The escalation of my thesis is a devised proposal which could seriously support the financial stability for Czech social enterprise.

The aim of this paper is to describe the process of raising funds on the example of selected non-profit organizations, which can be described as "good practice". Is a case study of one case, which case is the process of raising funds to non-profit organizations with their own fundraising department and integrated social enterprise. There were examined the activities within the processes, the organization structure of the actors involved and the external influences on the processes. Data were obtained by semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The data analysis was open coding. Results of the research of the process of raising funds in this work provides a description of these processes that are "good practice". The most important characteristics of the processes were the organization and targeting of the activities, good promotion, reducing dependence on sources with their diversity and active struggle against external influences. Key words raising funds, fundraising, social enterprise, "good practice", NGO

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AbstractBackground: Among the biggest threats to mankind are various environmental problems which have been mainly triggered by human interference with the planet. There have been various ineffective efforts to mitigate these detrimental effects. Therefore, another solution might come in the form of social enterprises tackling the aforesaid environmental problems. However, to increase the impact, they need to scale up. It is therefore of paramount importance to understand their major scale-up challenges as well as proposed solutions to scale up successfully. Along with that, we also scrutinize further scale-up opportunities to uncover the hidden potential of scaling up. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between social enterprises and their power to tackle environmental problems. We further build on what social enterprises tackling environmental problems must do to mitigate identified scale-up challenges successfully and to be able to seize any scale-up opportunity that comes their way with the main aim of scaling up their positive environmental impact.Method: Ontology – Relativism; Epistemology – Social Constructionism; Strategy –Qualitative, Exploratory; Approach – Inductive; Design – Grounded theory; Data Collection –10 semi-structured interviews; Sampling – Purposive, snowball; Data Analysis – Grounded AnalysisConclusion: Several factors hinder scaling up and solutions to those lie mainly in four key concepts i.e. business idea, value proposition, competency and collaboration. That has been presented in our proposed model (The Hot Air Balloon Model of Scaling Up). We believe that if these four key concepts are well addressed by SEEPs, they are likelier to overcome challenges as well as are in a better position to attract opportunities. Successful scale-up leads to better financial performance along with the overall objective of scaling up the positive environmental impact.