Abstract | This paper is directed toward defining social entrepreneurship and social enterprise as well as its characteristics. Differences between social enterprise and traditional enterprise are defined as well how it reflects on a measurement used in social entrepreneurship. There are still many debates over defining social entrepreneurship, as well as defining measurement of social entrepreneurship performance. This paper focuses on development of social entrepreneurship notion. Moreover, the emphasis is on the general social problems that are in the focus of social entrepreneurs which also represents the topic of this paper. Social entrepreneurship is analysed in Croatia, Sweden, and Switzerland. Defining patterns of social entrepreneurship of those three countries is based on statistical data of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor research in 2015. Central idea of this paper is to examine differences and similarities of social entrepreneurship in Switzerland, Croatia and Sweden. On one side we have most developed countries in a world, and on other side there is Croatia as developing country. It is general thought that in a less developed countries social entrepreneurship will be more represented, but as country is more developed that country experience the higher levels of prevalence of social entrepreneurship. In the selected countries, Switzerland experience the highest level of social entrepreneurship. Moreover, Croatia has a highest expectation to grow, which is expected, since Croatia is a part of European Union from 2008 and by that source of funding, support system and general legal framework is more suited for social entrepreneurship. We can conclude that the more developed country the more social sensitivity is growing which is main conclusion of this paper. General problems in research of social entrepreneurship is that it is hard to distinguish difference between standard entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship because most firms are combination of both kinds of entrepreneurship, so setting the limits can vary. Also, all data is based on interviews from most of the world countries and they are primary the result of the individual solving and answering interviews, which is based on individual’s honesty and personal experience. In order to fully understand the issue in this thesis, one section of a paper focuses on a comparison of Western and Eastern Europe as regions. Comparison of statistical data in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as Croatia,
Switzerland and Sweden are made in order to have a full perspective about today’s social entrepreneurship activity in these countries.
This paper also focuses on the challenges that can affect the statistical results of social entrepreneurship activity in a certain country, due to the specific problems that can occur in collecting data. Some of the ways on how to measure the impact of social entrepreneurship is also given and discussed in this paper.
Social entrepreneurship is new, but incentives of social entrepreneurship are not. There were always ambitious individuals who want to make a change in their community by making a positive impact, but only in the late 20th century, they are being recognized by academics and practitioners. It can only be concluded that interest, academical as well as practical, in this form of entrepreneurship will only grow. |