Shakeholder society?:Social enterprises, citizens and collective action in the community economy

On a daily basis we are confronted with social dilemmas, or the choice between our own short-term benefits and long-term collective benefits of societies. We often look to governments and markets to create a framework that enables us to make the choice for the latter easier, but with many grand challenges ahead of us – climate change, loss of biodiversity, mass migration, inequality, to name but a few – we will need to look beyond those and look into the possibilities citizens themselves have to contribute to solving those challenges. In the Netherlands, the social enterprise in the form of the social business has in the past often been put forward as a solution that gives citizens choices as consumers. In “Shakeholder society?” Tine De Moor brings in the perspective of the entrepreneurial citizen, and looks at the possibilities of bringing the roles of stakeholders and shareholders closer together, in cooperative social enterprises. She argues that we need to consider the full breath of social enterprises and give recognition to a diversity of players in this field, all of which brings parts of the solution to the fore. The origins and features of this particular type of social enterprise are discussed, as are the various ways in which they may provide society with the much-needed transformative power. De Moor furthermore discusses the role of scientists, governments, and citizens in increasing the resilience of the cooperative social enterprise as a transformative business model.