Fair Trade organizations as examples of social enterprises? Evidence from four European regions

Given their multidimensional missions, combining economic, social and sometimes political dimensions, FTOs have been proposed quite early as examples of “social enterprise” (SE). Such link has been made in a particularly explicit way in the United Kingdom, by both academics (e.g. Martin and Osberg, 2007; Nicholls, 2006) and practitioners. Following Dart (2004), the trend for FTOs to depict themselves (and to be depicted) as SEs probably stems from a research of legitimacy towards an environment that promotes values of entrepreneurship and innovation.
However, if FTOs are considered as obvious examples of SE, there still needs to be explained carefully why this is the case, and to what extent. Is it the involvement in FT that makes the enterprises “social”, or is it a set of particular organisational characteristics shared by most FTOs, or is it a combination of both? If the fact of “doing Fair Trade” is not a sufficient criterion to generate a SE dynamics – as we believe it –, then what is it in FTOs that makes these organisations eligible as SEs?
The answers to these questions are closely linked to the framework used to define SE. While we try to consider different conceptualisations of SE in our analysis (part 1), we pay a special attention to the “multiple goal” and “multiple stakeholders” features put forward by the authors of the “EMES network”. In part 2, we recall the basics of the FT concept and the historical evolution of the movement. We then present our empirical data on FTOs in four European regions. Finally, we confront these data to some of the SE features identified in the literature (part 3). In this analysis, we particularly try to examine to what extent FTOs pursue multiple goals and involve multiple stakeholders, and how such organisational characteristics could be linked to each other and to other features such as resources, age and size.