The Emergence of New Social Enterprise Models in Italy: First Insights from the International ICSEM Project

In recent years, social enterprises have been studied from different points of view, i.e the financial aspects, the governance, the theoretical perspective, and the existing different types at national level. This last aspect in particular needs greater clarity and deeper understanding as it has not yet been explored thoroughly enough.

With this in mind, this article aims to present the results of the ICSEM research project and to compare them with the different social enterprise models existing in Italy. The ICSEM project is a research project which started in 2013 and is still in progress involving 230 researchers from 55 different countries on 5 continents. The objective of the ICSEM project is to highlight the different models of social enterprises existing in different countries.

The main results of the article show the similarities and divergences of the different Italian social enterprises models compared to those highlighted by the ICSEM research.