Connecting the Right Dots: Economic Integration and Solidarity/Social Economy Supply Chains

Mainstream economic and business management theorists have often used large for-profit firms as their default units of analysis, and measures such as return on investment as proxies for performance. Once the determinants of performance are identified, they are distilled into models that are disseminated across the economy through universities, consultancy firms and policy experts. These models tend to become standardized across for-profit firms, not-for-profit organizations, NGOs and government agencies. In contrast, paying specific attention to the case of the well-developed Brazilian solidarity economy movement offers strategies that could prove useful to Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) movements around the world. One strategy that suggests a powerful and different form of economic integration is the formation of supply chains, yet this strategy is also subject to pitfalls given the ways that supply chain management has tended to focus on large for-profit firms.

Unrisd website unrisd.org