Stakeholder Brief #11 | Sustaining and growing one of the largest international communities of social enterprise scholars: The Empower-SE COST Action

This policy brief summarizes the main outcomes of the four Working Groups (WGs) – Theoretical Foundations of SE (WG1), SE Industries and Impact (WG2), SE Ecosystems (WG3), Training and Dissemination (WG4) – from the perspective of the stakeholders involved. All WGs succeeded in stimulating a lively exchange of perspectives among researchers and practitioners and contributed to empowering the next generation of social enterprise scholars. The perspective of different categories of stakeholders was well included in all events organized so as to foster a fruitful dialogue and contribute to mutual understanding between geographical and disciplinary points of view.

The COST Action 16206, entitled “Empowering the Next Generations of SE Scholars” (EMPOWER-SE) attempted to address existing fragmentation of social enterprise (SE) research, from both a geographical and a disciplinary point of view, as well as from the perspective of the different categories of stakeholders. As the first COST Action ever devoted to the SE field, the aim was to build a worldwide community of researchers that is well connected with practitioners working in the field.

EMPOWER-SE consisted of four Working Groups (WGs). All WGs succeeded in stimulating a lively exchange of perspectives among researchers and practitioners and contributed to empowering the next generation of social enterprise scholars with particular attention to non-Western European social enterprise scholars. The perspective of different categories of stakeholders was well included in all events organized so as to foster a fruitful dialogue and contribute to mutual understanding between geographical and disciplinary points of view. This holistic approach had a role in partially filling the gap between the scientific community, policymakers and practitioners at the national as well as international levels. Each of the WGs activities and outcomes are briefly described below.