Contributions to the Impact Assessment of Network Cooperation among Social Enterprises

The literature of industrial management has been focusing, although with different intensity, on the question of optimal company size since the 1960s. Whithin this framework the focus shifted since the 1980s form the examinations of, the effects of business outsourcing to increase efficiency to the organizational and economic connections of network cooperation, since the 1990s. Network cooperation analysis is especially relevant in the case of social enterprises, which are usually smaller than the sectoral average and are characterized with lower capitalization and higher risk than the average. This paper reviews the literature and methods, trying to find the answers to the following four questions:  What justifies network cooperation?  Which factors enhance and which factors discourage the start up of social entrepreneurial networks?  What kind of network types can be developed?  How can the effect of network cooperation be measured?