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.reves@revesnetwork.netFrom different standpoints, the social economy plays a key role at the local level.For the benefit of concision and clarity, we shall succinctly mention four main characteristics of therelationship between social economy and local development:" quality employment," embedded social capital," strengthened democracy, and" partnerships between local authorities and social economy actors.Quality EmploymentFirst of all, as an entrepreneurial tool, social enterprises are key actors in the creation of local qualityemployment in various fields: in some cases, social enterprises have become the main localemployer.This takes place for two main reasons.On the one hand, the social economy is bydefinition a local and/or regional embedded economy (vis-à-vis the global economy).Indeed thevery kind of production of many social enterprises is necessarily local in that they produce so-called "relational goods".These goods are those that are characterised by the contemporarypresence of both the producer and the beneficiary of production (i.e., the client).Second, many fields in which social economy actors are involved are characterised by a labour-intensive scheme, therefore inducing a large number of jobs.For example, one can refer to someexperiences of "village cooperatives" in Scandinavia or in Ireland, where almost all the villagers areinvolved or employed by a single, common, cooperative.In a similar way, one can also makereference to the experiences of social cooperative s consortia in Italy or those of social enterprises inSpain, mainly dealing with services to persons.Very often, these social economy actors can be majoremployers, having more than 1000 employees each.Embedded Social CapitalHowever significant, the economic aspect is probably not the major element concerning the localimpact of the social economy.As frequently claimed, the social economy does play a key role inboth building and improving the local, embedded, social capital.With this expression we normallyrefer to the value of the entirety of social relationships as well as to the local solidarity networkswithin a given territory.This notion may be enlarged, but for the time being it seems better toconcentrate on this concise definition.Strengthened DemocracyAs a relational economy, the social economy necessarily creates strong ties among different groupsrooted in the same territory (we could simplify by saying between the producers and thebeneficiaries, having in mind that in some cases these two groups may partly match).The manner inwhich these ties are created and the general behaviour of the communities result from an internalcharacteristic of social enterprises, namely internal democracy.It is certain that the structure ofsocial enterprises creates an in-house arena for training participants to democracy.In traditional capital-intensive enterprises, the lack of this aspect often creates short-circuitsbetween the internal work-environment (in which the worker spends a huge amount of time) andthe external (socio-political) environment.On the contrary, social enterprises may be seen as acontinuation of civil and democratic society mechanisms.32 Partnerships between Local Authorities and Social Economy ActorsThe aspects shortly summarised above allow us to briefly consider the relationship between socialeconomy and local authorities (municipalities, counties, regional or other kinds of locally electedauthorities).A thorough analysis of partnerships between local and regional authorities and the social economyhas been carried out by the EU Committee of Regions in its opinion paper Partnerships between localand regional authorities and social economy organisations: contribution to employment, local development and socialcohesion 30.On the basis of this major document, we underline here below some key aspects of such relations [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ] |
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