The export competitiveness of social economy enterprises. The case of southern Spain

Abstract

This work was performed in order to quantify the export competitiveness of internationalised Social Economy enterprises. To achieve this objective, we have quantified the strengths and weaknesses of the sector and first applied Rasch’s logistic model to measure the latent variable called export competitiveness. This is defined by the following items: size, cooperation, number of target markets, competitive advantages, years abroad and percentage of sales abroad. The article presents empirical evidence of 121 Andalusian Social Economy enterprises. The results show the export competitiveness of social enterprises reflected in a standard type of organisation with identified strengths: number of destination markets and competitive advantages