The course introduces the main models and themes related to the social economy and its relations with sustainable development, especially at the local level, addressing the topics from a theoretical, empirical, and practical point of view.
MODULE A (PROF. BELLANDI)
Lectures from 1 to 4
Borzaga C., Calzaroni M., Fontanari E., Lori M. (a cura di) (2021). L'economia sociale in Italia. Dimensioni, caratteristiche e settori chiave. ISTAT-EURICSE, Roma, ps. 1-53.
Lectures from 5 to 7
Becattini G., Bellandi M. (2009). Distretti industriali; un paradigma socio-economico. In Becattini G., Ritorno al territorio, Il Mulino, Bologna, ps. 53-77.
Lectures from 8 to 10
Camoletto S., Bellandi M. (2021), Forme di sviluppo locale «ibride»: il caso della provincia di Cuneo, in Stato e Mercato, n.123, 389-420.
Lectures from 11 to 12
Seminars on Olivetti e the communitarian development; and Social Innovation, Quadruple helix, and Urban action.
Materials (non-compulsory at the exam) are recommended in the section “Altre informazioni” for possible students’ elaboration and use in module B.
MODULE B (PROF. BELLANCA)
Lessons 13 to 16. Introduction to the social economy: from mutualism to commons
Giacomo Corneo, Oltre il capitalismo. Un viaggio attraverso i sistemi economici alternativi, Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino, 2020, capitoli 7, 8 e 9.
Hélène Landemore e Isabelle Ferreras, “In Defense of Workplace Democracy”, Political Theory, 44(1), 2016, pp.53-81.
Ivana Pais e Giancarlo Provasi, “Sharing Economy: A Step towards the Re-Embeddedness of the Economy?”, Stato e Mercato, 105, 2015, pp.347-377.
Lectures 17 to 18. Social economy and social enterprises: case studies
Pier Angelo Mori e Jacopo Sforzi, Imprese di comunità, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2019, capitolo 1.
John Storey et al, Managing and resisting ‘degeneration’ in employee-owned businesses: A comparative study of two large retailers in Spain and the United Kingdom, Organization, 21(5), 2014, pp.626-644.
Leonard Mazzone, Un’altra libertà. Lavoro, cooperazione e autogestione nelle imprese recuperate, Iride, 1, 2021, pp.107-118.
Lessons 19 to 20. Social innovation
Paul Tracey & Neil Stott, Social innovation: a window on alternative ways of organizing and innovating, Innovation, 2016, pp.1-10.
Filippo Barbera, L’innovazione sociale in Italia, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2019, capitolo 2.
Lessons 21 to 22. Cities as places of mutualism and social innovation
Allan Cochrane, In and beyond local government: making up new spaces of governance, Local Government Studies, 2020, 46:4, pp.524-541.
OECD, Enhancing Innovation Capacity in City Government, 2019.
Daniel T. O’Brien, The Urban Commons, Harvard University Press, 2019, Introduction.
Appointments 23 and 24. Student presentations
Learning Objectives
This course aims to introduce the student to issues and analyses relating to the “Social and Sustainable Economy”. Theoretical and empirical perspectives will be illustrated, with reference also to the local context.
Economic theory and quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to introduce students to empirical research, field research, and case studies.
The course covers theories, objectives, and instruments as well as the analysis of the economic and social effects of these themes.
Prerequisites
Basic notions of economics and history are useful as well as an average knowledge of English (B1-B2 level)
Teaching Methods
Lectures with traditional and flipped-class methods, assignments to be presented in class, seminars, and contributions from experts.
Further information
Complementary texts, especially useful for traces of exercises, group work, and presentations.
- On Olivetti and the communitarian development (seminar):
Camoletto, S., Bellandi, M. (2021), The Olivettian oeuvre and the Italian school of local development, in Economia Marche, vol. 40, n. 2, pp. 24-38
- On Social Innovation, Quadruple Helix, and Urban action program.
Bellandi, M., Donati, L. & Cataneo, A. (2021). Social innovation governance and the role of universities: Cases of quadruple helix partnerships in Italy, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 164.
On moodle, the student will also find optional in-depth materials for Module B.
Type of Assessment
The final exam aims at verifying the learning performance.
The method of the exam changes between attending and non-attending students. The first ones are present normally in classrooms and necessarily participate in seminars and laboratory activities.
For attending students, the evaluation combines the results of laboratory activities (presentations and contributions to discussions in classrooms) with an individual test, either in written modality (answers to 2 open questions, 30 minutes) without the help of notes/texts, or in oral modality, on a subset of the reading list of reference texts recalled in a previous section (the subset will be identified in relation to the laboratory work).
The evaluation for non-attending students combines the results of individual written and oral examinations. The written one proposes the answer to 3 open questions on general concepts of modules A & B (45 minutes, without the help of notes/texts) as included in the reading list recalled in a previous section. The oral consists of a discussion of both the answers to the written exam and cases/methods, to demonstrate the ability to apply the general concepts
Course program
The course introduces the themes and problems of the social economy in its relation to sustainable development, paying particular attention to the local level and addressing the topics from a theoretical, empirical, and practical point of view.
MODULO A (PROF. BELLANDI)
Lectures from 1 to 4
Concepts and data on the social economy in Italy
Lectures from 5 to 7
A short introduction to sustainable development (with deferment to module B for broader discussion) and a reading of the industrial district as an ideal type of a local productive system that connects sustainable development and social economy.
Lectures from 8 to 10
Case studies of local productive systems, district and non-district, for example, and deeper investigations on the overlapping of previous concepts and facts with topics related to the for-profit economy, social innovation, etc.
Lectures from 11 to 12
Seminar on the case of Olivetti and the communitarian development
Seminar on social innovation, quadruple helix, and the Urban action program.
MODULE B (PROF. BELLANCA)
The term Social Economy refers to organizations and enterprises promoted and managed in a participatory manner by actors other than capital contributors, which do not have profit as their sole or main objective, but rather the response to a need of the promoting group or community. However, when this concept (which is already very broad) is linked to socio-environmental sustainability, the aspect of social innovation must also be included, the latter being understood as the search for forms of organizational and institutional change that generate prosperity without (or minimizing, or stabilizing) material growth. In the theoretical part of Module B, both sides are analyzed.
After a historical evocation of mutual and cooperative enterprises, some theoretical and practical critiques of their viability are presented and more rigorous analytical models are illustrated (in particular, those due to Meade and Corneo). We then move on to case studies ranging from recovered enterprises to community enterprises, from Italian social cooperatives to the few experiences of federations of production cooperatives.
On the social innovation side, some conceptual definitions are illustrated and policy applications and varied experiments are discussed.
The last part of Module B consists of setting the entire exposition in the context of contemporary urban areas. In this regard, we begin with the Global South: the urban informal economy and the processes of formal institution-building are where social economy and social innovation have the greatest impact. In the Global North, in addition to presenting the smart and green city approach, experiences such as complementary currencies, social impact investments, or philanthropic capitalism are illustrated.