Stakeholder Brief #6 | Towards and enabling ecosystem for social enterprises

This Stakeholder Brief summarizes the debates among stakeholders, mainly practitioners and academics, during the stakeholder forum that opened the first meeting of Empower-SE Working Group 3 devoted to social enterprise (SE) ecosystems organized in February 2020 at the University of Bucharest (Romania).

The stakeholders forum was dedicated to host country stakeholder activities. Romania’s SE ecosystem was discussed in detail by major stakeholders involved in the sector’s developmental processes and practices. They shared their thoughts, concerns and vision of the future for SEs in Romanian and other EU countries with forum participants.

The first meeting of Working Group 3 of the COST Action “Empowering the next generation of social enterprise scholars” (Empower-SE), was held at the University of Bucharest’s Faculty of Sociology and Social Work in February 2020. The meeting was entitled “Towards and enabling ecosystem for social enterprises” and included a stakeholder forum gathering academic and practice stakeholders from diverse countries interested in exploring and/or supporting SE development and scaling. This forum was organized prior to the academic presentations and discussions that continued for a full day afterwards.

This forum’s specific objective was to equip major SE stakeholders with robust knowledge regarding how different SE ecosystem elements interact in each country and can have an impact on the sector’s breadth and depth of scaling.

Based on previous research results, researchers and stakeholders analyzed the diverse factors that contribute to shaping SE development using recent literature that explores the SE sector’s upsurge, SE recognition, access to resources and research, and education and skills development.