Dynamic Capabilities for the Development of Romanian Social Enterprises (RSE): Support and Synergies with the New Legislation System

Romanian social enterprise sector had a typical development in the Eastern European countries, emerging from state’s role to withdraw from solving social problems, caused by the fall of communism, in comparison to the case of Western European countries where social enterprises emerged from active effort of the state to promote social enterprises as a solution to its massive economic problems. We are trying to understand the way social enterprises developed and which is their current status in Eastern Europe in comparison with the Western Europe, to further explore the sector’s evolvement in Romania. We have analyzed an important turning point for Romanian social enterprises, represented by the entrance into force of the Law on Social Economy. Largely, this chapter wishes to explore the potential social enterprises can have in the Romanian economic, political, and social environment newly regulated by the Social Economy Law. In order to achieve this, a series of case studies has been carried on with Romanian social enterprises. Attention has also been paid to the way theory of dynamic capabilities can be applied in the case of social enterprises and to policy recommendations, which would facilitate the transformation of potential to visible impact

SOCIAL ECONOMY AND INFORMAL ECONOMY. INTERACTIONS AND EFFECTS

Both social economy and informal economy define complex economic phenomena, multifaceted, which generated multiple platform debate and analysis among economists, sociologists and lawyers. Perspectives on these concepts are the most diverse and present work attempts to link these views to find common denominators, but also the elements that differentiate them. Official social economy interacts with the informal economy through the initial use of capital and generating links between different forms of capital. Underground economy is based more on use of illicit and immoral capital, while the development of a formal social require networks of trust, reciprocal links with other groups and institutions, social and economic relations that are based on values and norms recognized by society. The interplay of social economy - informal economy is manifested either through a transition from the sphere of the informal (unofficial) to formal (official) or by maintaining and emphasizing underground activities as a result of using illegal or informal social networks and social capital already existing. From the perspective of this study, social economy-binomial informal economy should be seen as: a) mediating factor between the official and unofficial; b) factor of influence to ensure a legal and institutional framework apt to limit and discourage underground activities; c) factor of transition from the informal economy to the social economy

SOCIAL ENTERPRISES - FROM POTENTIAL TO IMPACT

Social economy is seen by many as the magical solution to the social and economic problems which came over time with each economic crisis. An important problem when dealing with social problems is however the need to find solutions which would work at large scale. As Lisbeth Schorr stated “We have learned to create the small exceptions that can change the lives of hundreds. But we have not learned how to make the exceptions the rule to change the lives of millions”. This not only rises the importance of social enterprises but also the necessity of a more strategic and systematic approach to the problem of spreading social innovation. The potential of a social enterprise, connected with the further assessment of its impact is an important correlation which needs further studies. It is one thing for social enterprises to exhibit a great potential, but it is another for that potential to be realized and to produce significant benefits for its target group. Even if the potential of social enterprises is generally known, and this is the reason for which social enterprises benefit from a lot of attention and support, within the literature existing on the social enterprises, the issue of its’ potential is not dealt sufficiently. On the other hand, impact assessment has been studied largely within the literature. This is maybe also because evaluation of social impact is a challenging endeavour for any person analysing a social enterprise, assessing subtle changes which are difficult to be measured, evaluated and traced back to specific events. The impact assessment, made through critical and interpretative accounting theories (which are contextual, seek for engagement, are concerned with micro and macro levels and are interdisciplinary), indicates that the evaluation of the social enterprises’ socio-economic impact can have a base on the positivist, critical and interpretative accounting approaches. However, despite the enthusiasm shown for assessments and metrics, which has been proved by the development of hundreds of different methods used for the calculation of social value, few people use the results in the decision making process. The present paper comes with the proposal to continue further studies on the potential of social enterprises, based on the fact that the correlation between the potential and the impact gives important information for the social enterprise’s general assessment

REFLECTIONS ON POVERTY SOLUTIONS OFFERED BY INTRODUCING SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TO ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

The new economy which characterizes today’s world is invaded by countless theories and concepts which try to explain the way societies fail to assure a general well-being for citizens and wish to offer support for the development of a flourishing and safe future. Between these concepts, some new and some old, are the social entrepreneurship and the ecosystem services. Both of these have started to become very important for researchers and policy makers in the last decade. Also, both have the objective of creating a more human economy and assuring the human well-being. Even though the subjects of these theories are very different, we have managed to show in this paper that a correlation between the two is possible and more than that their combination can have positive outcomes. Social entrepreneurship is a concept describing a new way of using business know-how gained from the private sector in order to find solutions to social, cultural and environmental problems. Ecosystem services are the benefits which people obtain from ecosystems. A relation between the two concepts can be represented by the fact that ecosystem services might be the subject of social entrepreneurship. Another one would be the input which social entrepreneurship might bring to ecosystem services, in what concerns abilities and techniques in dealing with different problems. In conclusion, we tried to show that these double way relations would have an important role in what concerns the fight against poverty