Awareness and attitudes toward social entrepreneurship among university students and disabled people. The case of the Czech Republic

In the Introduction, the typical features of the social entrepreneurship environment in the Czech Republic are highlighted. At the same time, this chapter also emphasizes the relationship between the conceptualization of social entrepreneurship in the Czech Republic and in the EU countries. This relationship is represented especially by influence of EMES ™ European Research Network approach to social entrepreneurship.

Social Entrepreneurship in the European Union

Nowadays, social entrepreneurship represents one of the possibilities the entrepreneurs can use to contribute to the solution of pressing social problems such as social exclusion, crime and unemployment. The general definition identifies social enterprises as the subjects selling products and providing services to achieve economic self-sufficiency and at the same time following a social purpose. According to Borzaga, Galera, Franchini, Chiomento, Nogales and Carini [1], the term “social enterprise” is often conflated with WISE (Work integration social enterprise) in public understanding in European Union countries. These enterprises focus on the employment of labour-market disadvantaged persons and the objective of these enterprises is to integrate these people into society or prevent their social exclusion. The labour-market disadvantaged persons are disabled persons, socially excluded persons, low-qualified persons and older or long-term unemployed people.

Although the typical feature of the prepandemics labour market (EU-28; 6.3% in September 2019, Eurostat1) is the low rate of unemployment, it is necessary to pay continuous attention to disadvantaged persons because these people face many specific social and health risks. According to Eurostat data, in 2018, 28.7 % of the EU population with a physical activity limitation was at risk of poverty or social exclusion, compared with 19.2 % of those with no limitations. Social entrepreneurship can be an effective tool for the integration of these people into society and an innovative way to protect them against social exclusion.

In EU countries, there is no uniform definition of social entrepreneurship. In some EU countries, social entrepreneurship is included in national legislation (e. g. Slovakia and Finland). In other countries, social entrepreneurship is not yet officially regulated (e. g. the Czech Republic and Austria). The definition of social entrepreneurship according to EMES (research network of university research centres and individual researchers of social enterprise) is widely recognized in the EU countries [2] (Table 1).

The definition provided above suggests that social entrepreneurship is based on two sets of principles – economic and social, and the emphasis is placed on the role of stakeholders.

Social Entrepreneurship in the Czech Republic

Currently, the Czech Republic lacks formal legislative regulation of social entrepreneurship. For this reason, an unofficial definition created by the non-profit organization TESSEA², inspired by the definition of EMES (introduced above), is used in the Czech Republic. This definition recommends the principles and indicators which should a social enterprise comply with ( Table 2 ). The definition is intended primarily for the allocation of subsidies and not for including social enterprises in the indicative database administered by the Czech

Table 1. The definition of social entrepreneurship according to EMES

2 Definition and Principles of Social Enterprise, TESSEA. Available at:

Table 2. The principles of social entrepreneurship according to TESSEA

Table 3. The indicators for social enterprises according to TESSEA

Source: TESSEA.

Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (listing in the database is voluntary). The principles and indicators are recorded in the following tables:

The following table 3 contains indicators that specify the implementation of the principles.

The research carried out in the Czech Republic in 2018 by the authors of this article suggests that WISE are the most frequented type of social enterprises. Czech WISE focus predominantly on the integration of disabled people back into society by giving them job opportunities (Krocil, Dopita, Pospfsil, [3]). At the same time, the research showed that in 2018, there was an excess supply over the demand for work of disabled people. That suggests even higher importance of the existing WISE as without them the excess supply would be even more significant.

According to TESSEA3, there are currently 300 social enterprises operating in the Czech Republic and 90% of them have the character of WISE. 80% of these companies focus on the integration of people with disabilities – in 2018 they employed almost 4,000 such disadvantaged people (according to Czech Labour Office4, in December 2019 there were 33,000 unemployed disabled people in the labour market). However, in the Czech Republic, the concept of social entrepreneurship is still being developed and lacks, for example, systematic public support and regulation. In addition, the total number of social enterprises operating in the Czech

Republic is low and thus, the concept of social entrepreneurship cannot reach its potential. To accelerate this development, raising awareness of social entrepreneurship among the Czech population may be important. In this research we focus on two selected groups of people within Czech population – these are disabled people as typical employees of Czech social enterprises and Czech university students of humanities as potential founders of new social enterprises. The relationship between social entrepreneurship on the one hand, and university students and people with disabilities on the other, is supported by the following Literature Review.