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

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. Based on the survey carried out among 200 possible stakeholders of Czech social enterprises we explored the awareness and attitudes of selected groups of people towards social entrepreneurship. These groups of people are disabled people as typical employees of Czech social enterprises and university students as possible future founders of these enterprises. Our research project focuses on three issues: i) the level of awareness of the concept of social entrepreneurship among university students and disabled people; ii) the position of disabled people in the current labour marketiii) the willingness of students to become entrepreneurs and to start business with social purpose. During the research, we used the method of structured questionnaires. The research shows that the awareness of the concept of social entrepreneurship is generally low. Nevertheless, students consider becoming entrepreneurs and starting a business with social purpose. The research also shows that according to the opinion of the respondents, it is difficult to find employment as a disabled person and that the current labour market does not offer enough vacant positions which could be interesting for these persons. From this perspective, we can assess further development of Czech social enterprises (especially of Work Integration Social Enterprises) as very important.