{"id":4664,"date":"2020-11-09T15:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T14:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/publication-research-report-social-enterprises-as-influencers-of-the-broader-business-community\/"},"modified":"2024-10-03T12:00:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T10:00:07","slug":"publication-research-report-social-enterprises-as-influencers-of-the-broader-business-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/nieuws\/publication-research-report-social-enterprises-as-influencers-of-the-broader-business-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Publication research report ‘Social Enterprises as Influencers of the Broader Business Community’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social enterprises \u2013 companies with an impact first <\/i>mission \u2013 play a crucial role in the transition towards a more sustainable economy. Although many social enterprises are small as compared to large industry leaders, transition theory shows that small, \u2018niche actors\u2019 are of crucial importance in accelerating transitions. Social enterprises lead by example and inspire others to come along in the sustainability transition. In fact, the Social Enterprise Monitor 2020<\/a> showed that 96% of Dutch social enterprises aims to actively influence other organisations to act more sustainably.<\/p>\n

To understand better how this influencing role works, Social Enterprise NL has conducted an important study on the ways social enterprises can influence the broader business community. On the basis of thorough academic literature research and case studies from the field, Social Enterprise NL presents an \u2018Influencing model\u2019<\/b>. This model shows that social enterprises can influence in three main ways:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Raising the possible\u2019 (showing that it is possible <\/i>to do business sustainably),<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Raising the desirable\u2019 (showing that it is desirable<\/i> to do business sustainably),<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018Raising the acceptable\u2019 (showing that it is unacceptable not to<\/i> do business sustainably).<\/i><\/p>\n

In practice<\/b>
\nThe \u2018model of influencing\u2019 then describes eleven \u2018influencing activities\u2019: concrete strategies that social enterprises employ to influence. Different inspiring examples from the Dutch social enterprise sector illustrate these activities. For example, social enterprise Tony\u2019s Chocolonely shows that it is possible to make fair chocolate and stimulates other chocolate-making companies to copy their methods through their Tony\u2019s Open Chain platform<\/a>. Albert Heijn, the largest retailer in the Netherlands, followed the example and became an official \u2018mission ally\u2019 for its private label chocolate brand Delicata.<\/p>\n

Another example shows that social enterprise Frank about tea published an \u2018Open letter to the CEO of Unilever\u2019<\/a> in the Dutch Financial Times. With this action the social enterprise actively raises awareness about the inequalities in the tea sector amongst consumers and professionals, stimulating them to hold companies accountable for their responsibility in the chain.<\/p>\n

Social enterprises can also contribute to raising official standards, such as voluntary industry agreements, certifications and even legislation, thereby making it unacceptable not<\/i> to do business sustainably. For instance, social enterprise Fairphone brings together major industry players in the Fair Cobalt Alliance<\/a> to jointly improve the conditions in which cobalt is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n

Research<\/b>
\nThis research shows that social enterprises \u2013 often relatively small players in their industries \u2013 can play a crucial role in the transition to a new economy. The results provide concrete tools to help social and other innovative companies from around the world accelerate the sustainability transitions in their industries through influencing.<\/p>\n

Do you want to know more, or do you have ideas for future projects? Let us know<\/a>!<\/p>\n

The research report: \u2018Social Enterprises as Influencers of the Broader Business Community\u2019.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social enterprises \u2013 companies with an impact first mission \u2013 play a crucial role in the transition towards a more sustainable economy. Although many social…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","wds_primary_category":1823,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1823],"tags":[1577,1574,1576,1575],"class_list":["post-4664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nieuws","tag-broader-business-community","tag-influencers","tag-research","tag-social-enterprises"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":1823,"label":"Nieuws"}],"post_tag":[{"value":1577,"label":"broader business community"},{"value":1574,"label":"influencers"},{"value":1576,"label":"research"},{"value":1575,"label":"social enterprises"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/441604933487_influencers_rapport_groot_.png",2481,1536,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"wijzijnmeo","author_link":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/author\/25a89330ad4e43a2\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":1823,"name":"Nieuws","slug":"nieuws","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1823,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":559,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":1823,"category_count":559,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Nieuws","category_nicename":"nieuws","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":1577,"name":"broader business community","slug":"broader-business-community","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1577,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":1574,"name":"influencers","slug":"influencers","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1574,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":2,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":1576,"name":"research","slug":"research","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1576,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":1575,"name":"social enterprises","slug":"social-enterprises","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":1575,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":1,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4664"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10705,"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664\/revisions\/10705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/social-enterprise.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}