3.2.5.1 Limitations and future research

The current study is part of a larger project involving comparative research on tailor-made laws and corresponding legal forms of social enterprises in three jurisdictions: Greece, Belgium and the UK. This larger study involved the development of single case or multiple case research designs regarding three corresponding legal forms for social enterprises, i.e. the Koinsep in Greece, the Vennootschap met Sociaal Oogmerk in Belgium and the Community Interest Company in the UK. Both studies used the same research method. In the current study, we limited our research to the examination of two Greek social enterprises which employ legal variations of the legal form of the Koinsep, i.e. a Koinsep of Care and a Koinsep of Collective and Productive Purpose. We limited our research to the development of two case studies to show that rich qualitative data collected through narratives and reflections by key respondents and additional supporting evidence obtained from relevant documents can produce results that go beyond the legal variations of the Koinsep legal form.

Knowing that the selection of a single case study approach would affect the validity of our inferences, we built on evidence from two case studies. We opted for this approach because it enabled us to comprehensively demonstrate the evidence identified in the data and in the emerging patterns. To eliminate the danger of overgeneralisation and to address concerns regarding the sampling of the case studies, we limited our research to two highly illustrative cases which were directly linked to our legal and theoretical elaborations. However, we are aware of the fact that the results of case studies may be case bound and significant only to the relevant subject matters in each case. Our objective, therefore, is to test the existing theoretical propositions to a greater extent and in the larger project, to develop a generalisable theory from case studies presented cumulatively in all the examined jurisdictions and regarding all the corresponding tailor-made legal forms for social enterprises. The replication logic that we have adopted will allow us to generate comparable results for various legal forms and corresponding organisations for social enterprises in different jurisdictions, i.e. in Greece, Belgium and the UK.1 It will also enable us to obtain research results which will likely reveal variations that go beyond the different legal variations of the legal forms.