Full Professor of Management Ph.D. Job Market Officer Venice School of Management Ca' Foscari University of Venice Cannaregio 873, Fondamenta S. Giobbe, 30121, Venice, Italy. Ph: +39 041 2347428

Member of:

Director of the Impact Unit within:

Founder & Scientific Director of ERShub@luiss (now CeSID) Scientific Advisor for Center on Sustainability, Inclusion, Digitalization

See our new Book on Empowement of the Marginalized!

ITA: open access // ENG: open access SOON!

This book addresses marginalization as a form of disempowerment, i.e., social, economic, and political exclusion that prevents people from realizing their potential. In particular, it explores how Social Business Hybrids (SBHs), organizations that use market-based strategies to activate the economic capabilities of marginalized people, can foster empowerment, and defines under what specific conditions such empowerment can flourish, especially in relation to the types of clients/beneficiaries SBHs address, and the environment they set up around their activities. The book aims to understand both the transformative actions SBHs undertake and the contexts in which these actions occur. Drawing from the Capabilities Approach (Sen, Nussbaum, Kabeer) and Community Psychology (Rappaport), the authors develop a framework integrating two key concepts: The empowering role of organizations and the ecological perspective that considers the effect of social spaces. They identify two main types of SBH actions: creation empowerment and access empowerment, and two types of empowerment spaces: safe spaces and open spaces for reconnection. These dimensions come together in the proposed SBH Empowering Matrix, which outlines four strategies, safe creation, open creation, safe access, and open access. Each is illustrated through a dedicated case study, providing practical insights into how SBHs can unlock the potential of marginalized people.