The paper has four parts: It first outlines the major definitions of social enterprise, the debates around them and their developments over timeas well as the existing conceptualizations to analyze the concept.
In its second part the paperfocuses on a central organizational features of social enterprises, looks for their expressions in the real world and identifies two missing components in the existing conceptualizations and consequently in the definitions of social enterprises.
In its third partit reports some findings about social enterprise entities, including a form that was developed in Israel and is based on the Kibbutz model.
The final part of the paper concludes with the implications of such a definition for policy and practice in the field.