The increase in the weight of social entrepreneurship (SE) in the economy has driven the increase in research on the subject. Within the set of approaches developed by scholars to analyse SE, the institutional approach has recently acquired greater relevance. Following this research trend, this article seeks to expand the empirical research on SE by focusing on the informal factors that are less studied in the literature and using a cross-national base. Using the New Institutional Economics and partial least squares–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), our findings show the influence of cultural context on the SE dimension. In addition, this influence occurs through two groups of variables led by social capital and corporate social responsibility, although their impacts show opposite signs. These factors have important implications for policy makers in charge of fostering SE development.

Millennials represent the most important group among the working age population. Destined to be the leaders of the future, their professional and personal profiles differ considerably from previous generations. Despite being considered as the most successful generation, millennials face a societal transformation and a labor reality marked by high levels of unemployment and underemployment that shape their career choice. Although millennials’ and university students’ job preferences have long been debated in the literature, some research gaps remain. Studies rarely consider the interplay between individuals’ profiles and the institutional form of business, particularly cooperative versus non cooperative options. To predict the compatibility between Millennials’ profiles and the cooperative job preference, a multinomial logit model is developed based on a survey of millennial business college students. Our key findings showed that some extrinsic issues are related to cooperative job preference, however the factor that has the most significant impact is the cooperative knowledge. This has important implications for the cooperative movement and for policy makers in charge of cooperative development.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be conceived as a construct that embraces different ideas, conceptions and relations between firms and society. This role as interface allows CSR to act as a business driver to transfer cultural values from the macro-level and transform them into part of corporate culture in the micro-level. Considering this integrative theoretical framework, relationships among development, changing values, CSR, innovation, and internationalisation are analysed. An empirical study using a Structural Equation Model (SEM) of Partial Least Square (PLS) technique, based on data from 32 countries, has been made. The results show that when society's values shift to post-materialism, firms that integrate CSR in their corporate culture obtain a source of knowledge creation that encourages firms' innovation and internationalisation.

Over the last few decades, the social and solidarity economy (SSE) has undergone complex changes, from being undervalued to being institutionalized as a key sector in the economy. Within this context of change, Ecuador is a remarkable example of a country that has revamped its public policy to situate the SSE in a position of prominence on the national landscape. Using the business cycle theory and based on a model of panel data from 2007–2017, this article attempts to empirically validate that the relationship between the size of Ecuadorian cooperatives, as core businesses of SSE, is coupled with the expansive and destructive economic cycles by adding two more variables: business structure and public policy. From a global perspective, the results confirm a procyclical of the behavior of cooperatives and the positive impact of the new public policy. However, the sectoral and territorial analysis concludes that only production cooperatives in the primary sector have grown in the new institutional framework, and that this growth is concentrated in provinces with a strong cooperative tradition.

Las zonas rurales enfrentan un conjunto de desafíos globales como resultado de las actuales transformacioneseconómicas y sociales. La contribución de las cooperativas, en tanto que empresas de estructura colectiva conuna fuerte adscripción territorial, ha originado que sean consideradas en algunos países como un pilar de laspolíticas rurales. Este trabajo analiza una exitosa iniciativa pública de casi treinta años: las cooperativas dedesarrollo regional. Su función como promotoras del movimiento cooperativo de Quebec es fundamentalpara la diversidad empresarial y el empleo de las regiones rurales.