What is a social enterprise?

The concept of social enterprise was introduced to China in 2006. That year, Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the Grameen Bank he founded, which helped hundreds of thousands of poor people through small loans. Grameen Bank is a typical social enterprise, which has been operating for 32 years before, and similar organizations have existed for many years. This shows that facts are often ahead of concepts, with the form of social enterprises first and the concept of social enterprises later.

It should be noted that although Grameen Bank has helped hundreds of thousands of poor people, it is not a public welfare organization. Social enterprises are first and foremost enterprises, which have profit demands, pay taxes according to regulations and share dividends with shareholders. This is essentially different from various charitable foundations represented by the Bill Gates Foundation. Although charitable foundations also have capital to operate, they can't pursue profits and dividends by themselves. They should help those poor people and institutions in need in a non-commercial way.

Generally speaking, what are the similarities and differences between social enterprises and commercial enterprises? Generally speaking, social enterprises achieve some social goals in a commercial way; Accordingly, commercial enterprises mainly aim at making profits and don't care about social goals-this is usually considered as what NGOs and governments should do. However, this statement has also been questioned by some scholars, who think that this method of distinction narrowly understands the social goals of social enterprises.

In this case, why should we emphasize the characteristics of its social enterprises separately? An important reason is that social enterprises have both commercial and public welfare characteristics. On the one hand, the commercialization of its operation mode ensures the professionalism and operational efficiency of the organization and the sustainable development of funds; On the other hand, its business is closer to public welfare. It can also be said that the public welfare undertakings have been transformed by means of commercialization, making them more efficient and sustainable.

Let's start with the very popular "corporate social responsibility". Many people's understanding of corporate social responsibility is still at the stage of "donating money and materials", and they have not linked corporate social responsibility with their own competitive strategies and capabilities. Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School, hit the nail on the head: "The public welfare of a company is not a question of the CEO feeling good". If it has nothing to do with the company's competitiveness and skills, it should be the task of the government and charities. "

Commercial enterprises can also use the idea of social enterprises to do public welfare undertakings. Michael Porter believes that no enterprise has enough ability to solve all social problems, and they must choose social problems that intersect with their own business to solve them. The key to the selection is not whether a certain cause is noble, but whether it can create * * * and enjoy value-which is beneficial to society and enterprises. He defined this method as creating * * * enjoyment value (CSV) to replace the traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR).