| Description |
The paper describes the current developments in the Czech social economy in the institutional context of the Czech national economy. More generally, this paper deals with the social economy and social enterprises as potential instruments for solving the crisis of the modern welfare states. In the introductory section we introduce the basic facts concerning the Czech sector of the social enterprises, as well as the Czech non-profit sector. We intend to identify the main actors defining and influencing social economy and third sector issues, describe and compare their goals, methods and power. We will focus on public agencies, private non-profit and for-profit organizations, and the most important interest groups. Next, we describe particular approaches to the social economy which can be identified in the Czech setting. We identify the ideological sources arising from socio-economic literature, as well as approaches and theories adopted by the academicians and scholars. On the other hand, we will pay attention to institutions declaring themselves as a part of social economy, as the social enterprises. To do this, it is be necessary to briefly recapitulate theoretical approaches and mainly economic theories demarcating the “social economy space”. Typical representatives of social economy will be analysed, special attention will be paid to organizations employing mentally or physically handicapped people. Because the concept of the social economy is still not well known and embedded in the Czech economic thinking, we will create the map of approaches typical for the Czech context. Social economy will be explained in connection with the concept of the third sector. Those concepts will be analysed and compared both on the theoretical and practical (applied) level. We will compare the strengths and weaknesses of both concepts, as well as the common features of those institutional complexes. Differences and contradictions between theories, real social enterprises principles and statistical evidence will be examined. In fact, we will try to answer the question how social economy concept is related to the nonprofit sector and on the other hand, by what criteria should it be distinguished. Special part of the paper is dedicated to the traditional part of the social economy – cooperatives. Czech cooperatives used to play an important role in socioeconomic life of the Czech society in the time of so called first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1939), but the history of Czech cooperatives is richer and older. Unfortunately, communist regime completely destroyed the main principles of cooperatives, such as voluntary and open membership, democratic member control, member economic participation, autonomy and independence, etc. However, cooperatives of all kinds re-emerged immediately after the Velvet revolution in the 1989 and they create very interesting part of Czech economy. Nevertheless, many of them are far from initial ideas of cooperative movement. They very often behave as traditional for-profit companies with no positive “social” overlap. We will examine this field, probably with the use of case studies. As a final issue, we intended to explore the barriers of the massive development of the social economy in the Czech Republic. We will show that the model of social enterprise remains relatively very weak; all the popular definitions unclear and insufficient. We will also try to prove that the real source of attention being paid to the social economy derives not only from importance and scientific attractiveness of this topic, but mainly from the (international) public support of everything “social” and “innovative”.
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