Cooperative, Social Enterprise, and Community-Based Enterprise: Competing, Substituting, or Complementing?

Abstract

Questioning the novelty of an increasingly implemented organizational form ‘community-based enterprise (CBE)’, this paper aims to compare CBE with two existing forms, namely cooperative and social enterprise, which at a first glance are quite similar to CBE. This paper discusses, analyzes, and compares the three forms using an organizational perspective, including organizational goal and architecture. The three intersects to one another. Social enterprise focuses on social goals and has a relatively broad scope of governance arrangement. Meanwhile, CBE has similar vibes with community cooperative, i.e. concentrating on citizen participation and aiming to provide benefits not only for members but also for local people in a broader sense. However, CBE has more flexible governance arrangement. If the legal form of CBE is not further developed or not offering financial advantage, then it can be a good opportunity for cooperative to expand its wings over the markets usually covered by CBE. The results of this paper advance the CBE’s conceptual work and uncover opportunity for strategic implementation of the three forms.