Working Papers - Economics The Human-Centred Business Model and Hybrid Business Forms: A Primer and a Roadmap Diletta Lenzi and Andrea Zorzi Working Paper N. 13/2019 DISEI, Universit`adegli Studi di Firenze Via delle Pandette 9, 50127 Firenze (Italia) www.disei.unifi.it The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in the working paper series are those of the authors alone. They do not represent the view of Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa The Human-Centred Business Model and Hybrid Business Forms: A Primer and a Roadmap Diletta Lenzi Post-doctoral research fellow University of Trento, Faculty of Law Andrea Zorzi Aggregate professor of Business Law University of Florence, Department of Economics and Management Via delle Pandette 32, 50127 Firenze, Italy e-mail
[email protected] April 2nd, 2019 Abstract The paper was written as part of the preliminary research for the Human Centred Business Model Project, a project developed within the Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development and now supported by the OECD Development Centre. In a preliminary fashion, the paper skims the surface of ‘social’ businesses, in the broadest sense, around the world, identifying some general trends and commonalities and some differences. The paper covers jurisdictions from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia and describes the organisations that can be used to carry out social business. Keywords: corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder value, social enterprise, benefit corporation, hybrid organizations JEL codes: G30, G34, G38, K20, K22, K38, L31, M14 1. Introduction* Less than a decade ago, Mohammed Yunus could write that the law offered no specific instrument to entrepreneurs that wanted to do business with a goal to make society better off.