Theoretical Study and Investigation into the Actual Conditions about the Roles of Non-profit Intermediate Organizations in the Welfare Society

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This research project is trying to investigate a socio-economic state in the near future in view of 'Economie Sociale', that is, the Social Economy. Especially, it is the object of this project to study the non-profit sector under the post Welfare State, with analyzing 'the Third Sector' that consists of community businesses, welfare co-operatives, social-service co-operatives, NPOs, associations and so on.As a result of carrying out some research into it, this project comes to the conclusion that many kinds of attempts based on the concept of the social economy in European countries give important clues to thinking about the socio-economic system in the near future. In particular, it is indispensable to grasp and understand the researches or investigation into the actual conditions about the non-profit sector consisting of community businesses, associations and social co-operatives in Western Europe ancl NPOs in North America.It is important to research on community businesses and welfare co-operatives in Britain, workers' co-operatives in France ancl Germany, social co-operatives in Italy, SAL (employees' stock ownership enterprises) in Spain and so on. Practically, ICOM (Britain), NETZ (Germany), CGSCOP (France), LEGA (Italy), Mondragon and COCETA (Spain), American Federation of Workers' Co-operatives and so forth should be taken up as the subject of this study from now on.This project team concludes that it is essential to analyze, first of all, social service based on a community (community-welfare) in European countries in 1990s, then, to compare it with North American and Japanese conditions.