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The idea that market mechanisms can mobilize social change by engaging the poor in win-win scenarios is gaining increased world attention. In this study, the authors assess market initiatives in Iberoamerica by large corporations, cooperatives, small and medium enterprises, and nonprofit organizations.
Inclusive businesses are commercially viable business models that provide in-scale innovative and systemic solutions to problems relevant to the lives of low-income people. Inclusive business companies often involve women in their value chain and provide specific services that help low-income women. This report assesses the extent to which inclusive business models promote women's economic empowerment. Examples come from the inclusive business portfolios of Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and International Finance Corporation. The report finds that inclusive businesses are indeed bringing positive change to women’s lives and that addressing gender-based constraints also yields business benefits. However, a company’s financial return and its social impact can be maximized only if companies understand and address systemic issues of gender inequality.
Despite progress made in recent years, poverty and inequality continue to burden developing countries. The issue is not only ethical and political, but also economic: poverty in emerging countries is both a cause and outcome of economic stagnation. The current financial crisis has only made the problem worse. Across Latin America, interest in inclusive businesses has soared, becoming a shared focal point of concern by groups that, up to now, were hardly talking to each other: businesspeople, social entrepreneurs, activists, philanthropists - even political leaders. Widespread enthusiasm over inclusive businesses, however, has not been coupled with an equal measure of clarity on the meaning of the concept. Not surprisingly, skepticism has emerged from both the business community and spokespeople for the social sector, voicing legitimate concerns and doubts. Such concerns put into question what exactly is innovative about current efforts to undertake business ventures with people drawn from the bottom of the economic pyramid. What defines these initiatives? What are key factors for success? Following is an attempt to examine and conceive emerging practices in inclusive businesses by drawing on three years' of research findings led by the Social Entrepreneurship Knowledge Network (SEKN) in nine countries from Iberoamerica.
Poverty and inequality in Latin America are easily recognizable in the faces of women, Afro-descendents, the indigenous, people with disabilities, victims of HIV/AIDS, and other groups outside the societal mainstream. Social Inclusion and Economic Development in Latin America reviews the common features of these excluded populations, including their invisibility in official statistics and the stigma, discrimination, and disadvantages they have long endured. But it also examines the region's inclusionary policies and programs that can improve access by these groups to the quality social services and economic and political resources these groups need to level the playing field. Case studies examine ethnic and racial political organization, gender quotas, and labor markets across the region, and social exclusion in Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru. Comparative studies summarize social inclusion policies of both the European Union and selected countries on the Continent.
This book argues that Latin America must confront two main challenges: greater innovation to increase productivity, and greater inclusion to incorporate more of the population into the benefits of economic growth. These two tasks are interrelated, and both require greater institutional capacity to facilitate both innovation and inclusion. Most countries in Latin America are struggling to escape what economists label “the middle income trap.” While much if not all of the region has emerged from low income status, neither growth nor productivity has increased sufficiently to enable Latin America to narrow the gap separating it from the world’s most developed economies. Although income inequality has diminished across much of the region in recent years, social vulnerability remains widespread and institutional weaknesses continue to plague efforts to achieve equitable development. This volume identifies lessons that can be learned and adapted from experiences within the region and in East Asia, where the middle income trap has largely been avoided. This book is the result of a collaborative project undertaken by American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies (CLALS) and the Corporation for Latin American Studies (CIEPLAN) in Chile, with financial support from the Inter-American Development Bank’s Office of Strategic Planning and Development Effectiveness.
This book focuses on the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) in Latin America and examines the role of the markets in serving low-income populations as consumers, distributors, and entrepreneurs. Deep inequalities, violence, and urbanisation characterise the region. Despite the reduction of poverty observed during the first two decades of the 21st century, Latin America is the most unequal region in the world. Outside active war zones, the region has the highest homicide rate in the world and violence and inequality are both deeply intertwined. Markets have a crucial role to play in closing this gap and offering job and income opportunities, especially to unemployed youth, paving the way for safer, more peaceful, and sustainable development. The book also offers a theoretical reflection on the role that community enterprises who manage common-pool resources can play in serving markets and creating income opportunities for the rural poor. The book is recommended for managers, policy makers, students, and scholars interested in Base of the Pyramid markets and their potential to lift people out of poverty and to promote a more equal society.
The purpose of this publication is to distill the concepts, trends, and best practices in social enterprise development developed through case studies into models and guidelines for building new partnerships that will revolutionize the field in the decade to come. It explores the dynamics of an entirely new institutional entity, the social enterprise, and the role it is playing in the development of Latin America. It explores how institutions have combined a mix of social values and goals with commercial business practices and how they have come up with ownership models, income and capitalization strategies, and unique management and service systems designed to maximize social value. The logical framework and case studies within the monograph provide an opportunity to develop an illustrative typology with models.
In the absence of a widely accepted and common definition of social enterprise (SE), a large research project, the "International Comparative Social Enterprise Models" (ICSEM) Project, was carried out over a five-year period; it involved more than 200 researchers from 55 countries and relied on bottom-up approaches to capture the SE phenomenon. This strategy made it possible to take into account and give legitimacy to locally embedded approaches, thus resulting in an analysis encompassing a wide diversity of social enterprises, while simultaneously allowing for the identification of major SE models to delineate the field on common grounds at the international level. These SE models reveal or confirm an overall trend towards new ways of sharing the responsibility for the common good in today’s economies and societies. We tend to consider as good news the fact that social enterprises actually stem from all parts of the economy. Indeed, societies are facing many complex challenges at all levels, from the local to the global level. The diversity and internal variety of SE models are a sign of a broadly shared willingness to develop appropriate although sometimes embryonic—responses to these challenges, on the basis of innovative economic/business models driven by a social mission. In spite of their weaknesses, social enterprises may be seen as advocates for and vehicles of the general interest across the whole economy. Of course, the debate about privatisation, deregulation and globalised market competition—all factors that may hinder efforts in the search for the common good–has to be addressed as well. The second of a series of four ICSEM books, Social Enterprise in Latin America will serve as a key reference and resource for teachers, researchers, students, experts, policy makers, journalists and other categories of people who want to acquire a broad understanding of the phenomena of social enterprise and social entrepreneurship as they emerge and develop across the world.