"Empowering the Marginalized": the New Book from the MCE Centre on Social Impact Hybrid Enterprises
"To counterbalance, in the long term and in a sustainable way, the external forces, it is necessary to activate other forces, forces that come from within the person, arising from the person’s own potential. Enabling these potentials means generating resources useful for sustaining the mechanism, having at disposal an ‘engine,’ a propulsive force – the person themselves – endowed with the incentive and abilities to reproduce the premises at the base of their own integration." (From the Introduction)
Can the market become a social space capable of promoting the empowerment and active participation of socially marginalized people?
The Markets, Culture and Ethics (MCE) Research Centre of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross is pleased to announce the publication of the book Empowering the Marginalized: il ruolo delle imprese ibride ad impatto sociale, authored by Luca Mongelli, Scientific Coordinator of the MCE Research Centre and Associate Accredited Researcher at the University of L'Aquila, and Francesco Rullani, Full Professor at the University of Ca’ Foscari Venice.
The book, published by Giappichelli and also available in open access, makes a significant contribution to the reflection on crucial themes related to the empowerment of marginalized individuals and the role of hybrid organizations operating in the market.
Empowerment: An Innovative Perspective on Enabling and Inclusion
Enriched by the foreword of Daniele Di Fausto, CEO of eFM and Founder of Venture Thinking, the text proposes concrete strategies to enable people typically excluded from the market in the process of creating economic value. The goal? To enable these individuals to overcome the barriers that limit their possibilities, often referred to as “existential peripheries.”
Social Business Hybrids as a Tool for Economic Empowerment
The authors adopt a counterintuitive approach to traditional economic logic, which holds that a person has value only if they can generate profit or remunerate capital. Social impact hybrid organizations, on the other hand, use the market both to guarantee their economic sustainability and to activate mechanisms that promote autonomy, self-determination, and the emancipation of individuals.
A central element of the work is the analysis of Social Business Hybrids, which are innovative organizational models combining economic sustainability with agency-building mechanisms focused on unlocking the economic potential of typically marginalized individuals. These organizations create safe spaces where people can reconnect with the market and contribute to the creation of economic value.
An Opportunity to Rethink the Economy
The book explores four models of empowerment, transforming them into distinct keys for understanding the topic in a concrete and in-depth way. These models, already central to the “Empowering People” webinar series organized by the MCE Research Centre, come to life through case studies of MadeInCarcere, Ridaje, Pedius, and Dynamo—tangible examples of how theories can be translated into successful practices.
Join this reflection and discover how the market and hybrid organizations can be tools for empowerment and social transformation.
Sezione:
