Market-based social economy firms such as social enterprises, social purpose businesses, co-operatives, credit unions, and community economic development corporations aim to meet distinct social needs while making money. Do these types of businesses have the potential for growth in the modern economy? Are they destined to function only in areas where conventional firms cannot achieve a sufficient rate of return? Or will the role of social economy organizations change as businesses begin placing more emphasis on corporate social responsibility?

Building on the popular 2010 collection Researching the Social Economy, Businesses with a Difference explores the challenges and opportunities faced by firms that seek a genuine balance between their social and economic objectives. Through international case studies, including comparative analyses, this innovative collection highlights the unique issues that must be addressed when associations are accountable not to investors and shareholders, but instead to ordinary people.

Social Purpose Enterprises: Case Studies for Social Change presents case studies of twelve organizations that operate in a growing niche within the Canadian social economy: market-based entities supported by a nonprofit organization and operated for the benefit of a workforce who lives on the margins of society.

Using a variety of research methods, the contributors examine the work of social purpose enterprises in a range of businesses including food service, child care, furniture, courier services, and microfinance. Combining the experience of academics and practitioners, each chapter analyses the economic, social, and policy implications of the case.

Building on research published in Researching the Social Economy (2010) and Businesses with a Difference (2013), Social Purpose Enterprises provides a valuable resource for those involved in the growing push to encourage market-based solutions for those on the social margins.

Pension funds have come to play an increasingly important role within the new economy. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006, trusteed pension funds in Canada had $836 billion of assets and represented the savings of 4.6 million Canadian workers. Pensions at Work is a unique collection of papers that uses a labour perspective to deal with the socially responsible investment of pension funds. Featuring leading Canadian and international scholars, it builds on existing scholarship on socially responsible investment and on the growing interest of the Canadian labour movement in joint trusteeship. What is unique about this collection is that it synthesizes three distinct themes - socially responsible investment, pension funds, and labour studies. The contributors address an array of critical issues such as gaps in the education of union trustees of pension funds, the impact of human capital criteria on shareholder returns, the influence of corporate engagement upon corporate performance, and the nature of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Although the essays in Pensions at Work all address the nexus between socially responsible investment, pension funds, and unions, each looks at a particular manifestation of that relationship through a different disciplinary lens. This collection moves the discussion to pension funds in which union representatives are also trustees, a relatively new approach that will be of great interest to institutional investors, the labour movement, and instructors in labour studies programs.

Market-based social economy firms such as social enterprises, social purpose businesses, co-operatives, credit unions, and community economic development corporations aim to meet distinct social needs while making money. Do these types of businesses have the potential for growth in the modern economy? Are they destined to function only in areas where conventional firms cannot achieve a sufficient rate of return? Or will the role of social economy organizations change as businesses begin placing more emphasis on corporate social responsibility?

Building on the popular 2010 collection Researching the Social Economy, Businesses with a Difference explores the challenges and opportunities faced by firms that seek a genuine balance between their social and economic objectives. Through international case studies, including comparative analyses, this innovative collection highlights the unique issues that must be addressed when associations are accountable not to investors and shareholders, but instead to ordinary people.

Researching the Social Economy is one of the first comprehensive research collections on the social economy in Canada. While the term "social economy" is used widely is Western Europe and Quebec, it has had minimal currency in English Canada, where the differences between the public and private sectors and among nonprofits, co-operatives, social enterprises, and community economic development organizations have been emphasized. The contributions to this volume, flowing from an inter-regional and international network of scholars and community organizations, analyze how the social economy, in its many manifestations, interacts with and shares commonalities with organizations in the other sectors of the economy. Taken as a whole, Researching the Social Economy enriches our understanding of how this important cluster of organizations contributes to Canadian society in both economic and social terms, and lays the groundwork for future study.