Entrepreneurship, both in the past and nowadays, appears as one of the key tools to address solutions to problems not answered by existing businesses or the public sector. Societies and governments face a multitude of challenges, namely social, cultural, economic and environmental (Haugh, 2005; Braga, Proença, & Ferreira, 2014), which demand urgent and innovative solutions. Societal innovation and social entrepreneurship play, indeed, an important role in our society and economy. This topic becomes so important for governments that the promotion of social entrepreneurship is being explicitly included in the agendas and policies of European economies (European Comission, 2010).
The process of responding to a societal problem involves a number of stages, since the identification, evaluation and exploitation of opportunities, to the creation of social value (Certo & Miller, 2008). Social entrepreneurs identify gaps in society needs and economic offer and turn such gaps into business opportunities. They have the ability to motivate people concerning their cause and to build support networks, which are crucial in the development of society relationships. Social entrepreneurship is not focused only on profits (Austin, Stevenson, & Wei-Skillern, 2006). Instead, the fundamental purpose is creating social value for the public good through supporting the resolution of social issues, such as answering to societal problems, for instance, unemployment and inequalities in access to health. While a business entrepreneur focuses his/her attention on the economic return or profit, a social entrepreneur mission is always essentially social (Austin et al., 2006). Although profit-making is not the end in itself, the concern about sustainability in order to ensure economic health and continuity of the social enterprise (Dees, 1998), should be achieved also.
Considering the importance of the value social entrepreneur create, it is important to understand the process of generating ideas and creating a company. This paper aims at investigating the particular phase of the process in which the company is created, guided by the research question “What are the main obstacles for starting-up a social business?”
Despite the differences in the missions of traditional and social entrepreneurs, some difficulties when establishing social businesses are the same (Silva, Amorim, & Ferreira Dias, 2015). However, there are some additional issues of special relevance for social entrepreneurs. Such unique challenges are due to both backgrounds of social entrepreneurs, who usually come from other areas beyond economics or management, and to the special features of social enterprises, whose legal form is not clear yet, across several European countries.(Silva et al., 2015).
A number of obstacles is identified in literature, as the main challenges for social entrepreneurs: the mobilization of human and financial resources, bureaucracy, the fact that it is something innovative, communication management and time, the process of decision-making and lack of credibility or inexperience in the area (Braga et al., 2014). Nevertheless, only a few studies focus their attention on the process of stablishing a social business, being difficult to identify key issues that may be the basis to create support and solutions to would-be social entrepreneurs.
This paper will present the results of an exploratory study that aims to identify the obstacles to establish a social enterprise reported by managers and potential entrepreneurs involved in the ERASMUS+ Project "Social Entrepreneurship Support Europe - SES EU"[i]. The data analysed was collected in four European countries (Cyprus, Italy, Poland and Portugal). Two different groups of participants were surveyed: (1) managers/owners of social economy enterprises and (2) individuals interested in setting up a social economy enterprise.
It is expected the results to reveal the main difficulties faced by entrepreneurs when undertaking the mission of establishing a social enterprise. Since the study analyses the perspectives of both would-be entrepreneurs and managers and/or owners of already established social enterprises, it will allow the comparison between different perspectives. The inclusion of individuals from four different countries of the European Union will provide an insight on the main obstacles faced also across Europe. Given the size of the sample, the findings may constitute a basis for governments and policy makers to take decisions regarding the main areas in which to invest and to support would be social entrepreneurs, in the start of their business. Last but not the least, the paper aims to identify the challenges and obstacles for potential entrepreneurs in the social economy to warn them about what they most probably will face throughout the process of creating a social business.
In spite of the difficulties in reaching accurate conclusions at this stage of the investigation, it seems that social entrepreneurs are submitted to bigger difficulties at the time of start-up their businesses compared to classic entrepreneurs. The results of this study should constitute an alert to the institutions with responsibilities in the area of entrepreneurship and/or social entrepreneurship, who should take actions to support and give guidelines to future social entrepreneurs
8. Social enterprises, sustainable transition and common goods
