Industrial Organization, Non Profit Economics

Project Description:

Cooperatives, one of the oldest types of social enterprises, have received fresh attention because they can play an important role in social and ecological transition. This research project will focus on the sustainability of worker cooperatives and the new wave of so-called “social cooperatives”. First, it will analyse the resilience of SCOP, the French worker cooperatives, to the recent crisis. Secondly, it will look at “social cooperatives” and investigate their survivability. Thirdly, it will explore the institutional arrangements/governance structure of worker cooperatives and social cooperatives to analyse their similarities and divergences and to see to what extent those organisations can be understood as commons.

Project description :

The ``DENIS’’ project is a follow-up of the VISE project (2016-2019). The project sheds light on the impact of social enterprises on the dynamism and welfare of the local territories where they locate. It is a multidisciplinary framework, in which academic researcher, federations and social enterprises cooperate to develop new methods of impact assessment and valorization.

Project Description

This Cost Action aims at:

• Contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the diversity of SE models emerging across Europe and globally;
•  Empowering the next generation of SE scholars, focusing on expanding the SE scientific community to less research-intensive countries where it is still embryonic or non-existing;
• Fostering evidence-based policy from local to European levels and supporting the development of SE and their eco-systems in synergy with main industry representatives and stakeholders;
• Implementing networking mechanisms to connect fragmented communities and to contribute to closing the gap between the scientific community, policy- makers and society throughout Europe and beyond.

More information at http://www.empowerse.eu

Project Description

This project will conduct a comparative and systematic assessment of advantages and disadvantages of organisational and business models of the collaborative economy in the Region of Brussels-Capital in three specific sectors: mobility, housing and food. The project is a collaboration between 3 Belgian universities (UCLouvain, StLouis and Odisee-KUL).

Project Description

This project is part of the partnership between CIRTES and the social enterprise Les “Petits Riens”. It aims to develop a transdisciplinary research approach linking scientific knowledge issues and societal challenges, regarding the implementation of social performance indicators in social enterprises. This question is at the heart of scientific and social debates, and raises many controversies. The aim is to deepen, beyond discourse, but based of a concrete and long-term experience, the knowledge on the conditions for implementing social performance measures in a multidimensional approach that takes into account the different political, organizational, epistemological and methodological issues.

Project Description

The aim of this project is twofold: to shed some light, through scientific research, on the complexity of the social economy and to provide tools to promote the social and environmental sustainability of enterprises. Les Petits Riens collects, selects and sells second hand clothes. Although less well known it also implements a wide range of social actions. Indeed, among others, Les Petits Riens host and support more than 300 homeless people every year. Engaged in this Chaire, this social enterprise has chosen a scientific approach to formalize and improve its actions and to share the knowledge acquired during more than 75 years of activity. It believes, indeed, that changing the way enterprises are organized from a social, economic and environmental perspective is a key factor to tackle poverty and exclusion. Every year the Chaire will choose a different topic relevant for both social enterprises and the academic researchers in the field. This first year, it will investigate the issues and the complexity of social impact measurement. This topic is crucial for social enterprises as they face an increasing pressure from public bodies and private investors in order to prove their social impact. It is also a relevant subject for academic research as social impact measurement raises important theoretical and methodological questions.

Chaire’s Webpage: https://uclouvain.be/fr/chercher/cirtes/chaire-les-petits-riens-l-economie-sociale-au-service-de-la-lutte-contre-la-pauvrete-0.html

Project Description

In recent years, many innovative sharing economy platforms (SEPs) had a strong impact on their stakeholders: service providers and consumers alike. Platforms change the economy: individuals renting out rooms or driving cars create competition for established hospitality and transport providers (as evidenced by the protests of taxi drivers in cities where Uber operates). SEPs also impact society as a whole: they prompt change in how people plan, travel, meet and eat. Their operation can modify social and economic environment in entire communities (think of Airbnb’s effects on cities’ housing markets and quality of life).

The sharing economy is not only a land of promises but also of great perils. Even fast- growing and global for-pro t platforms like Uber are still struggling to make a pro t, while the failure rate of startups is higher than in other sectors. Also, many non-pro t SEPs fail to stay active. For both types of platforms, the road to success is paved with a number of economic, legal and operational challenges, which directly stem from their innovative business model.

These multifaceted challenges motivate our overarching research question: How can platforms in the sharing economy deliver long-lasting value for their stakeholders and for society as a whole?

Answering this question calls for a truly interdisciplinary approach. Researchers in economics, law and operations worked on SEPs before, but the goal of this research project is to go beyond the intra-disciplinary tunnel vision and foster cooperation between researchers from these disciplines. Our objective with this research project is thus to conduct a ne-grained analysis of the implications of the sharing economy, combining researchers from economics, law and operations.