The Study did not develop a new definition of social enterprise; rather it ‘operationalised’ the existing and widely accepted notion of social enterprise as articulated in the European Commission’s SBI communication. The SBI definition incorporates the three key dimensions of a social enterprise that have been developed and refined over the last decade or so through a body of European academic and policy literature:
- An entrepreneurial dimension, i.e. engagement in continuous economic activity, which distinguishes social enterprises from traditional non-profit organisations/ social economy entities (pursuing a social aim and generating some form of self-financing, but not necessarily engaged in regular trading activity);
- A social dimension, i.e. a primary and explicit social purpose, which distinguishes social enterprises from mainstream (for-profit) enterprises; and,
- A governance dimension, i.e. the existence of mechanisms to ‘lock in’ the social goals of the organisation. The governance dimension, thus, distinguishes social enterprises even more sharply from mainstream enterprises and traditional non-profit organisations/ social economy entities.
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