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Assessing the Non-financial Outcomes of Social Enterprises in Luxembourg

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Abstract

By addressing social issues, rather than maximizing profits, social enterprises are said to contribute to the well-being of societies. In this paper, we test whether social enterprises fulfil this expectation. The paper applies regression analysis to a unique dataset obtained by merging survey data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor with official statistics on social enterprises in Luxembourg. Results suggest that social enterprises contribute to subjective well-being, which is an encompassing measure of people’s satisfaction with their own life. We find that when the share of social enterprises in a city increases, the ill-being of poor and unemployed people declines. Therefore, policy makers who seek to increase the well-being of economically disadvantaged people could adopt policies to promote the creation of social enterprises.

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Notes

  1. As suggested by the name, this ministry takes care of activities within solidarity economy as well, which may be intended as a subset of the social economy. Activities within the solidarity economy pursue social goals with the purpose of questioning and transforming the society, as well as by reducing social injustices (Utting et al. 2014). For instance, while an amateur soccer club is part of the social economy, an amateur soccer club for refugees is part of the solidarity economy (e.g. the Italian team Liberi Nantes, which is composed of African refugees). In this paper, we focus on social enterprises within the more general social economy.

  2. Possible legal forms are cooperative, non-profit organization, charitable organization, fraternal benefit organization, mutual insurance association, cultural association and sports association.

  3. Possible overlapping social enterprises are considered only once.

  4. The authors are thankful to an anonymous reviewer for raising this point.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Andréa Gosset for her precious contribution on an earlier version of this work, and acknowledge the financial support of the Observatoire de la Compétitivité, Ministère de l’Economie, DG Compétitivité. F. Sarracino: Russia (LCSR Russian Government Grant #11.G34.31.0024 from November 28, 2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques du Grand-Duché du Luxembourg (STATEC), STATEC Research, 13, rue Erasme, 2013, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

    Francesco Sarracino & Luca Fumarco

  2. Laboratory for Comparative Social Research (LCSR), National Research University Higher School of Economics, 20, Myasnitskaya, Moscow, Russia, 101000

    Francesco Sarracino

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  1. Francesco Sarracino
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Correspondence to Francesco Sarracino.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13.

Table 8 Marginal effects for each category of the life satisfaction variable
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Table 9 Estimates of the non-financial outcomes of social enterprises using random intercept model with three levels
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Table 10 Marginal effect on well-being including the share of social enterprises in 2011
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Table 11 Association between the share of social enterprises and the proxy ‘my life is close to my ideal’ (complete table)
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Table 12 Association between the share of social enterprises and the proxy ‘the conditions of my life are excellent’ (complete table)
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Table 13 Association between the share of people employed in social enterprises and life satisfaction (complete table)
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Sarracino, F., Fumarco, L. Assessing the Non-financial Outcomes of Social Enterprises in Luxembourg. J Bus Ethics 165, 425–451 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-4086-9

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