Social Enterprises and Their Ecosystems in Europe

Download or read book Social Enterprises and Their Ecosystems in Europe written by and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins of Estonian social enterprises can be traced back to at least the 19th century Soviet period when work integration was common. Socialism’s transition to a liberal free-market economy heavily influenced the evolution of social enterprises. Estonia’s current view of these enterprises as ‘civil society’ emerged from the third sector. Foreign aid and donations in the 1990s that have continued since 2002 have advanced the country’s civil society concept. Funding has also had a major influence on the social enterprise sector’s development. In this period, a number of civil society organisations developed a de facto social enterprise model. Use of the term ‘social enterprise’ can be traced back to 2005 in Estonia when the concept of ‘social entrepreneurship’ was first introduced. Currently, the terms social entrepreneurship and social enterprise are used interchangeably with little distinction between the former (mindset/trend cutting across different sectors—private, public and non-profit) and the latter (type of institution/ typology of enterprise).