The Fourth Sector: The future of business, for a better future

Abstract

We are facing a new trend in doing business moving beyond corporate social responsibility where new hybrid business models are formed to address a variety of societal and environmental challenges. The fourth sector can be defined as the group of organizations, models and practices, whose objective is to solve the great problems of the 21st century, combining elements from the three traditional sectors: the public, the private and the non-governmental. The fourth sector is raising in different forms in this new entrepreneurial landscape such as social enterprises, business-owned enterprises, crosssector collaborations or B corporations. Businesses within the fourth sector are blended value organizations because they pursuit social and environmental goals, at the same time that they use business methods. This chapter disentangles the meaning of the fourth sector shedding light on the new entrepreneurial ecosystems for new sustainable business models.