Fair Trade Organizations and Social Enterprise

This book highlights the diverse organizational avenues through which Fair Trade entrepreneurs may concretely implement the hybrid aims of Fair Trade: making business, impacting small-scale producer groups and achieving systemic social change. Through a study across Europe, this book examines Fair Trade Social Enterprises at the crossroads between civil society and the market.

Auteur

Benjamin Huybrechts is an Assistant Professor and holder of the SRIW-Sowecsom Chair in Social Enterprise Management at the Centre for Social Economy, HEC Management School, University of Liege (Belgium). He holds a PhD in Economics and Management (University of Liege) and has been on a post-doctoral research stay at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, Saïd Business School (University of Oxford). He has published several book chapters and articles on Fair Trade and Social Enterprise and has co-edited a special issue on Fair Trade in the Journal of Business Ethics (2010). He is a member of several academic networks, including Fairness and EMES.

Résumé
For several decades, social enterprises have been pioneers in the conception and implementation of a pathbreaking social innovation: Fair Trade (FT). Fair Trade Social Enterprises have created a movement which has challenged mainstream trading practices and offered development opportunities for disadvantaged producer groups in the South. Starting from a niche market aimed at convinced customers, FT has expanded and entered mainstream retailing outlets, growing in visibility and market share, while simultaneously experiencing diversification of its organization models. While pioneer Fair Trade Social Enterprises in the early years were largely nonprofit organizations relying on voluntary work, they have become increasingly diversified in terms of legal forms, governance models and organizational practices. These diversified models seem to reflect the hybrid nature of FT itself, through different ways of combining a commercial activity (trading of FT products), a social mission (support to producers), and an explicit or implicit political message (often expressed through education and advocacy). Based on the study of Fair Trade Social Enterprises across Europe, this book builds a typology of organization models for FT. Author Benjamin Huybrechts further examines how the different organization models combine the economic, social, and political dimensions of FT, and how they manage the possible tensions between these dimensions. Fair Trade Organizations and Social Enterprise proposes a range of theoretical approaches to interpret the diversity of Fair Trade Social Enterprises and offers concrete avenues for managing social enterprises and hybrid organizations in general.

Contenu

Introduction Part 1: Diverse and Innovative Organizational Models in a Hybrid Field 1. Fair Trade: A Hybrid Concept and Practice 2. Fair Trade Social Enterprises Worldwide and in Europe 3. Categorizing Hybrid Organizational Models Part 2: Theoretical Perspectives 4. Theoretical Framework 5. Fair Trade Social Enterprises as Efficient Institutional Arrangements 6. Fair Trade Social Enterprises as Reflections of Their Environment 7. Fair Trade Social Enterprises as Institutional Bricolage Part 3: Managing Hybridity in Fair Trade 8. Managing Hybrid Organizational Models Conclusion. Notes. Bibliography. Index