Comparing Different Patterns of Social Enterprise Incubation in South Korea

During last five years, Korea has witnessed very fast growth of social enterprises. The number of social enterprises, entrepreneurs, and their employees has expanded enough to make up for their unique spheres of ecology and... [ view full abstract ]

During last five years, Korea has witnessed very fast growth of social enterprises. The number of social enterprises, entrepreneurs, and their employees has expanded enough to make up for their unique spheres of ecology and various kinds of social enterprises are actively competing for their survival. In this study, the author tries to examine and compare different patterns of social enterprise growth. The author tries to distinguish social enterprises depending on their main resource bases: government dependency, company sponsorship, and civil partnership. Most of the newly created social enterprises in Korea are government dependent in the sense that they have to rely on government support for their survival. Company sponsorship enterprises can be designated when a social enterprise have to depend on the financial or market resources on a specific or dominant company. The emergence of social enterprise based on civil partnership is distinguished with those two patterns because their resource bases are diverse, independent, and market driven. The major objective of this research is getting some clues in approaching deeper understanding of social enterprise phenomena in Korea by comparing the genesis, weakness, strength, and survival strategies of those three patterns of social enterprises. In order to do this, this research will try to compare representative cases in each growth patterns. Comparing typical cases may not be comprehensive in understanding the phenomena of social enterprise in Korea. However, we may expect this will provide us a unique perspective in understanding social enterprises in Korea which is different from the official and bureaucratic categorization of social enterprise. This paper also contains a critical viewpoint on the problems of official categorization of social enterprises in Korea. So far, the official categorization of social enterprises has been mainly dominated by the government agencies. The functional as well as mechanical division of social enterprises by political needs of government ministries made unnecessary divisions among social enterprises and those bureaucratic divisions have brought about growing confusions and built useless barriers among social enterprises. The second argument of this research is that the resource bases, governance patterns, and managerial patterns of social enterprises will be eventually determined by political processes among different stake holders. Central government ministries, local governments, private companies, and civil society may have different interests and concerns on the ways of social enterprise. Different political coalitions, rivalries, and partnerships may shape unique pathways of social enterprises and those contexts will inevitably reflect different patterns of power balances among major stake holders. Based on this comparison, we may figure out the present conditions of social enterprise in and better ways of sustainable future for the successful establishment of social economy in Korea.