Business support networks for social enterprises: a study of the Brazilian support ecosystem

• Autor(a) principal: Loureiro, Sara Maria do Carvalhal Roque
• Data de Publicação: 2013
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/120299
• topic: Social enterprise; Brazil; Business support; Inter-organizational networks; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Social enterprises, economically self-sufficient businesses with primarily social objectives, are emerging and promising to help tackling Brazil’s social problems. Nevertheless, such promise is contingent on the development of a supportive ecosystem. This study explores the business support ecosystem for social enterprises in Brazil by providing a preliminary qualitative analysis of the effectiveness of the support network for social enterprises according to the perceptions of both social entrepreneurs and support providers. Such analysis is developed using Turrini et al. (2010)’sconceptual model on the determinants of network effectiveness for pattern matching. Results suggest that such network has been marked by a rapid growth of high quality business support availability but that such services are still concentrated in the South east of Brazil, being higher levels of both interaction and formalization among support organizations and of financial resources, public awareness and government support considered paramount to enhance ecosystem building.