Assessing the cooperation propensity of social entrepreneurs : a multicriteria analysis of human factor effects

Social enterprises (SEs) hold a key innovation and development role owing to their focus on delivering the goals of the social economy sphere of action. The latter relates to social, economic, and political goods which fall into the failure locus of both the private markets and the public sector of the economy. As such SEs are considered a valuable and flexible instrument complementing the overall entrepreneurship and innovative initiatives of all economies. Here we test for the innovative and cooperation propensity of social entrepreneurs giving policy makers in the field an informative model of how to assess high impact SEs. We focus on the role of human factor (composition of human, social and psychological capital) and test for its effect using a dataset of 114 Greek social enterprises’ members. The observed differences between the human factor variables that determine the innovative and cooperation propensity of agricultural cooperatives’ members in contrast to social purpose enterprises’ members illustrate the presence of different channels through which public sector—social actor cooperation in the filed might be built. Important insights for decision making in the field are provided.