[PDF] Does Social Enterprise Law Matter eBook

Author : Joseph W. Yockey
Publisher :
Page : 52 pages
File Size : 33,9 MB
Release : 2014
Category :
ISBN :

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Social enterprise laws are sweeping through the nation. Entrepreneurs can now organize under one of several new legal forms, including the “benefit corporation” form. In theory, these options will make it easier for socially minded firms to pursue a double bottom line of profit and public benefit -- that is, to do well while doing good. This Article tests that theory. In asking whether social enterprise laws matter, I find that the answer is “yes,” but not for the reasons most people think. The standard rationale for social enterprise laws is that they free managers from the “duty” to put profits ahead of social objectives. But that idea misses the point; existing corporate law is already flexible enough to permit most social/economic tradeoffs. Instead, I argue that social enterprise laws add value by creating a new institutional structure that will motivate the development of self-regulatory standards and provide a helpful coordinating mechanism for legal advisors and pro-social investors. The Article thus offers a unique way of thinking about social enterprise laws. Rather than simply provide new off-the-rack legal forms, these laws encourage a process of norm creation and private engagement that ought to drive the social enterprise movement forward. I conclude by offering firms and lawmakers several strategies to reinforce this dynamic.

Author : Dana Brakman Reiser
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 217 pages
File Size : 41,33 MB
Release : 2017
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0190249781

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Social enterprises represent a new kind of venture, dedicated to pursuing profits for owners and benefits for society. Social Enterprise Law provides tools that will allow them to raise the capital they need to flourish. Social Enterprise Law weaves innovation in contract and corporate governance into powerful protections against insiders sacrificing goals such as environmental sustainability in the pursuit of short-term profits. Creating a stable balance between financial returns and public benefits will allow social entrepreneurs to team up with impact investors that share their vision of a double bottom line. Brakman Reiser and Dean show how novel legal technologies can allow social enterprises to access capital markets, including unconventional sources such as crowdfunding. With its straightforward insights into complex areas of the law, the book shows how a social mission can even be shielded from the turbulence of an acquisition or bankruptcy. It also shows why, as the metrics available to measure the impact of social missions on individuals and communities become more sophisticated, such legal innovations will continue to become more robust. By providing a comprehensive survey of the U.S. laws and a bold vision for how legal institutions across the globe could be reformed, this book offers new insights and approaches to help social enterprises raise the capital they need to flourish. It offers a rich guide for students, entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners.

Author : Henry Peter
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 949 pages
File Size : 32,10 MB
Release : 2022-12-29
Category : Law
ISBN : 3031142160

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This open-access book brings together international experts who shed new light on the status of social enterprises, benefit corporations and other purpose-driven companies. The respective chapters take a multidisciplinary approach (combining law, philosophy, history, sociology and economics) and provide valuable insights on fostering social entrepreneurship and advancing the common good. In recent years, we have witnessed a significant shift of how business activities are conducted, mainly through the rise of social enterprises. In an effort to target social problems at their roots, social entrepreneurs create organizations that bring transformative social changes by considering, among others, ethical, social, and environmental factors. A variety of social enterprise models are emerging internationally and are proving their vitality and importance. But what does the term “social enterprise” mean? What are its roots? And how does it work in practice within the legal framework of any country? This handbook attempts to answer these questions from a theoretical, historical, and comparative perspective, bringing together 44 contributions written by 71 expert researchers and practitioners in this field. The first part provides an overview of the social enterprise movement, its evolution, and the different forms entities can take to meet global challenges, overcoming the limits of what governments and states can do. The second part focuses on the emergence of benefit corporations and the growing importance of sustainability and societal values, while also analyzing their different legal forms and adaptation to their regulatory environment. In turn, the last part presents the status quo of purpose-driven companies in 36 developed and emerging economies worldwide. This handbook offers food for thought and guidance for everyone interested in this field. It will benefit practitioners and decision-makers involved in social and community organizations, as well as in international development and, more generally speaking, social sciences and economics.

Author : Benjamin Means
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 831 pages
File Size : 39,97 MB
Release : 2019-01-03
Category : Law
ISBN : 1316946932

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Growing numbers of employees, consumers, and investors want companies to be truly good; these stakeholders will accept lower economic returns in order to support companies that prioritize sustainability, fair wages, and fair trade. Unlike charities or non-profit organizations, such companies - or social enterprises - are not only permitted but also expected to produce an economic return for investors. Yet, unlike traditional business ventures, social enterprises have no obligation to maximize profits, even on a long-term basis. In this comprehensive volume, Benjamin Means and Joseph W. Yockey bring together leading legal scholars and practitioners to offer an authoritative guide to social enterprise law and policy. The Cambridge Handbook of Social Enterprise Law takes stock of the field and charts a course for its future development. It should be read by entrepreneurs, investors, practitioners, academics, students and anyone else interested in how companies are evolving to address new demands for capitalism with a conscience.

Author : Thomas A. Kelley
Publisher :
Page : 47 pages
File Size : 46,71 MB
Release : 2014
Category :
ISBN :

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Social entrepreneurs are people who envision widespread, systematic social change and who attack society's ills at the roots employing the spirit and the tools of entrepreneurship. They reject the traditional boundaries between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors and carry out their plans through so-called hybrid social enterprises, which combine the soul of nonprofit organizations with the discipline and business savvy of for-profits. Although social entrepreneurs generally are driven by a desire to do good, they view themselves as business people who are trying to achieve double bottom-line (financial and social) or triple bottom-line (financial, social and environmental) results. Why should the emergence of these new hybrid social enterprises be of concern to lawyers? Because their creators claim that they inhabit a social frontier, which they sometimes refer to as the quot;emerging fourth sector,quot; where outmoded laws and inappropriate, old-style legal entities hamstring their socially transformative plans. With increasing vehemence, they are demanding new laws, particularly new types of hybrid business entities, to give legal structure to the emerging fourth sector.This paper describes the social enterprise frontier, paying particular attention to a recent trend whereby social entrepreneurs form their ventures as for-profit companies even though their ambitions are largely charitable. The paper then critically examines various proposals for creating new types of hybrid for-profit/nonprofit entities to provide a legal structure for fourth sector social enterprises. The paper concludes that a very recent legal innovation, the Low Profit Limited Liability Company (quot;L3Cquot;), holds particular promise for meeting the needs of social entrepreneurs and the emerging fourth sector.

Author : J. Haskell Murray
Publisher :
Page : 53 pages
File Size : 28,84 MB
Release : 2018
Category :
ISBN :

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In the wake of the most recent financial crisis, interest in social enterprise has increased exponentially. Disillusioned with the perceived shareholder wealth focus of corporate law, entrepreneurs, investors, customers, and governments have become more receptive to new paradigms. In the past four years, nineteen states have passed at least one of five different types of social enterprise statutes and many additional states are considering similar legislation. Focusing primarily on the benefit corporation form, this Article examines three main issues: (1) whether social enterprise statutes are potentially useful; (2) how social enterprise law can be improved; and (3) whether the social enterprise movement will be sustainable. First, regarding usefulness, this Article recognizes that the traditional legal framework already provides social entrepreneurs most of the flexibility they seek, but posits that the social enterprise statutes may better combat perceptions of a shareholder wealth maximization norm arising from existing for-profit corporation law (especially in Delaware). As a potential alternative to social enterprise statutes, this Article suggests that states like Delaware could simply amend their existing corporate codes to expressly allow for a societal- or environmental-focused objective in a corporation's charter. Second, regarding improvements to existing social enterprise law, the Article suggests: (i) statutorily requiring social entrepreneurs to choose their own primary master; (ii) recognizing modified versions of traditional corporate law concepts; (iii) lowering transaction and uncertainty costs; and (iv) eliminating or modifying certain mandatory rules. Third, regarding sustainability, this Article concludes that the most intensive social enterprise branding efforts should be left to the private sector organizations like B Lab; and social investors, perhaps using new vehicles like crowdfunding and Social Impact Bonds, must fill the funding gap left by hesitant traditional investors.

Author : Beate Sjåfjell
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 758 pages
File Size : 11,60 MB
Release : 2019-12-12
Category : Law
ISBN : 9781108473293

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The emerging field of corporate law, corporate governance and sustainability is one of the most dynamic and significant areas of law and policy in light of the convergence of environmental, social and economic crises that we face as a global society. Understanding the impact of the corporation on society and realizing its potential for contributing to sustainability is vital for the future of humanity. This Handbook comprehensively assesses the state-of-the-art in this field through in-depth discussion of sustainability-related problems, numerous case studies on regulatory responses implemented by jurisdictions around the world, and analyses of predominant strategies and potential drivers of change. This Handbook will be an essential reference for scholars, students, practitioners, policymakers, and general readers interested in how corporate law and governance have exacerbated global society's most pressing challenges, and how reforms to these fields can help us resolve those challenges and achieve sustainability.

Author : Carol Liao
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 33,58 MB
Release : 2020
Category :
ISBN :

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The international emergence of alternative corporate forms and certifications has given credence to a new strain of law developing within the corporate sustainability movement, known as social enterprise law. What are some of the trade-offs that accompany such laws? Upon canvassing the development of social enterprise lawmaking initiatives worldwide, two preliminary observations arise. First, the majority of social enterprise laws, particularly in Europe and Asia, are designed to address the targeted needs of special and/or marginalized populations. The minuscule number of these businesses formed to date suggests that concerns over the shrinking of public goods and services remain largely theoretical. Second, U.S. benefit corporation laws may only strengthen erroneous beliefs on existing corporate law and governance - thus creating impediments to broad-scale sustainability change. The aggressive pursuit of a global market by private U.S. entrepreneurs behind the B Corporation certification and benefit corporation laws contrasts starkly with state-led initiatives. Benefit entity statutes risk hollowing out public infrastructure in favour of the private Americanization of good governance standards in non U.S. countries.

Author : Carol Liao
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 37,5 MB
Release : 2020
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ISBN :

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New laws designed to foster and govern social enterprises are propagating throughout the world. Beyond American initiatives, relatively little has been written to date on the global contagion of lawmaking to address the burgeoning field of social enterprise. Increased corporate lobbying to transplant American “benefit” corporation legislation into other countries, with little sensitivity towards existing legal ecosystems in those nations, has generated an urgency to broaden the literature and unearth the wide range of social enterprise law initiatives occurring across the globe. This article identifies over 40 state initiatives across 30 countries to distinguish this international movement. Critical thematic issues are identified from the available data, in hopes of shifting the focus away from private American interests in non-US countries and adding new knowledge to the development of social enterprise law and policies in the years ahead. This article begins by detailing various ways in which states have defined the purpose of social enterprise and social enterprise-type businesses, including how jurisdictions have experimented between state-run certifications and separate corporate legal structures to meet growing demands from particular sectors and stakeholders. We find that most jurisdictions require social enterprises to have a specific social purpose designed to serve the targeted needs of specific sectors, marginalized groups, and/or vulnerable communities. Next, we examine how new state legislation has sought to ease or restrict capital access for these social enterprises. Finally, we provide a detailed overview of various tax initiatives explored by states to promote and foster social enterprises. We suggest that lawmakers proceed with caution in the development of social enterprise laws, particularly when they are in response to private interest groups, and engage in fulsome discussions on the range of available legal methods to foster social enterprise within their jurisdictions.

Author : J. Haskell Murray
Publisher :
Page : 49 pages
File Size : 18,95 MB
Release : 2016
Category :
ISBN :

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During the last seven years, over thirty states have passed at least one social enterprise statute. These social enterprise statutes allow the formation of a plethora of new entity types, including low-profit limited liability companies, benefit corporations, benefit limited liability companies, public benefit corporations, and social purpose corporations. Social enterprises have attracted increasing academic attention, but virtually nothing has been written on if and how states are competing for these entities. This Article attempts to fill that void, while also providing a history of the social enterprise forms, a comparative analysis, and recommendations for states that wish to engage in jurisdictional competition in the social enterprise law market.