Social enterprises, from social cooperatives to the other entrepreneurial organisations of the third sector, occupy a distinctive place in the economy. Positioned at the crossroads of market, public policy and civil society, they pursue social goals through entrepreneurial means, and their capacity to create value rests to an unusual degree on people. Their services are relational and “personality-intensive”: quality is decided in the encounter between professional and beneficiary, and depends on motivation, judgement and care more than on tools or structures. Their workforce blends employees, professionals and volunteers; their cultures are strongly value-driven; their governance is participatory and multi-stakeholder; and their commitment to inclusion makes diversity management a constitutive feature rather than an add-on.

As artificial intelligence enters social enterprises, they are becoming knowledge ecosystems in which human and artificial agents jointly sense needs, allocate resources, match people to roles and support decisions. This makes them a revealing setting for the IFKAD 2027 theme, “The Ecology of Knowledge in the AI Era”. On the one hand, AI can ease chronic constraints such as limited managerial capacity, weak planning and the difficulty of measuring social impact. On the other, AI systems designed around efficiency logics may erode the relational, tacit and value-laden knowledge that is the core asset of these organisations, crowd out intrinsic motivation, or reproduce biases that contradict their inclusive mission. The ecological risk the conference warns against, a knowledge monoculture, is particularly concrete here.

The track focuses on leadership, organisational culture and human resource development as the levers through which social enterprises can cultivate healthy human–AI knowledge ecosystems. How should leaders balance professional autonomy, managerial accountability and algorithmic support? How do mission and values shape the adoption, meaning and limits of AI? How must workforce planning, recruitment, evaluation, training and volunteer management be rethought, and how can AI serve diversity and inclusion rather than undermine them?

The track draws on a tradition of business economics that places the promotion of the human person at the centre of every institution, a view that closely resonates with the notion of integral ecology underpinning the conference theme. From this perspective, the experience of social enterprises offers lessons that extend well beyond the third sector: it shows how efficiency and human flourishing, economic sustainability and social purpose can be held together. Scholarly contributions are expected to extend HRM, leadership and knowledge management theories to settings where values, relationships and AI coexist. Managerially, the track seeks frameworks and evidence useful to managers, HR professionals, policymakers and the support networks of the social economy. Conceptual, empirical and practice-based studies are welcome, including comparative research between social enterprises and for-profit or public organisations.