The Centre of Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra (Portugal) was able to approve the project - TIMES (Institutional Trajectories and Social Enterprise Models in Portugal), which is on the coordination and leadership of Professor Sílvia Ferreira (Researcher at Atlantic Social Lab project at CES).

The project will run for 30 months and will run from June 1, 2018 to November 30, 2020. The project sponsors are the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) funds through the COMPETE 2020 Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), and by Portuguese funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology. In addition to the coordination and leadership of Professor Sílvia Ferreira, the TIMES project also counts with Professor Hugo Pinto as Researcher (Researcher Responsible for the Atlantic Social Lab Project at CES).

The TIMES project looks at and visualises social enterprises as a reality that has been affirmed in Europe, implying innovations in the organizational forms of the social economy and sectors, articulating the economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions, among others, guiding its mission for problems of poverty, unemployment, aging, sustainability, among others.

Social enterprises

Social enterprises are a reality gaining momentum in Europe, implying innovations of organizational forms of the social economy and activities articulating the economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions, among others, orienting their missions to problems of poverty, unemployment, ageing, sustainability, etc.

The existing knowledge in Portugal is limited, despite the international, scientific and political relevance of social enterprises. However, the discussions around the concept are also indicative of the transformations and complex articulations in the field of social economy and the relations between these organizations, the state, companies and the market.

This project aims to contribute to the knowledge of the meaning, profile, institutional context and roles of SE in Portugal, in order to help strengthening its role in solving social and societal problems. To do this, it will:

• map the institutional framework and meanings of social enterprises in Portugal
• build a typology of social enterprise models in Portugal
• identify how existing institutional frameworks shape the behaviour of social enterprises and how these shape institutional frameworks
• seek to understand the role of social enterprises in responding to social and societal challenges

The project articulates institutionalist approaches to the study of public organizations and policies to analyse the co-evolution of SE and its institutional context. It adopts the concept of social enterprise of the European tradition, developed within the framework of the EMES International Research Network: “organizations that combine an entrepreneurial dynamic to provide services or goods with the primacy of their social aims.” This definition includes three dimensions: a) the economic project; b) the social orientation; c) governance.

The project team is multidisciplinary, covering sociology, law, economics and management and has investigated in the fields of the third sector, social economy, cooperativism, management and quality in the third sector, welfare mix, social entrepreneurship innovation, cooperative law, social enterprises, innovation and territorial development.