What is Social Economy
Topic 1: Running a Social Economy Enterprise
The decision to start a social economy organization (or a social enterprise) is often motivated by the need to change the world and the wish to answer to current urgent societal challenges. Social economy professionals have solid ideals and aspire to contribute to the welfare of a community and tackle sustainability issues. However, they soon learn how many competencies are required to do so! SE organizations need knowledge from a variety of fields, going from Governance to Law, from Marketing to Social accountability.
Topic 2: Cultivating Skill for Social Economy
One of the most important ingredients to create any type of enterprise is skills and competences. Skills can include soft skills, e.g. team building, encouragement, conflict resolution, etc. or hard skills (those that you get through education/training) e.g. business management, accounting, etc. It makes sense then to examine what are the skills that are needed in SE. Our co-creation process revealed that while 'hard' skills play an important role, it is 'soft' skills and personality traits like empathy or determination that are additionally very much needed in SE. These can be cultivated through practice and experiential training, although the update of formal education in 'hard skills' should not be neglected.
Check also SE4Ces Living Lab concept note.
Topic 3: Support structure for Social Economy
Social Economies do not operate in silos and their evolvement is not purely based on the performance of their organizations; they are embedded in different social, environmental and economic systems which, to a certain extent, define their possibilities to thrive over time. The combination of these different conditions that either support or hinder the flourishing of social economies is called "support structures". Support Structures may involve different elements: local cultures, legislation, national support mechanisms, political institutions and organizations, (con)federal networks, research institutions and more. It is the level of connection between these elements that matters for the development of these alternative economies.
Topic 4- Creating and assessing value/impact for Social Economy
This module interrogates the concept of value in the context of the social economy and seeks to broaden it from its economic dimension. In doing so, it explores the different ways in which value can be defined, for example in social, environmental or economic terms. It also puts forward a multiple stakeholders’ perspective and suggests that there are different , possibly conflicting, conceptualisations of values (value for whom?). Finally, it reviews various methods and models for assessing value in the social economy.
