University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

payments and expenses addressed to support the new policies aggravated the fiscal
crisis of the welfare state.
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The proclaimed un-sustainability of the welfare state was coupled with its incapacity
of both identifying and meeting a growing demand for differentiated welfare
protection. Hence, the difficulty of reaching consensus for withdrawing resources,
necessary to maintain levels of social security, could no longer be reached (Borzaga
and Defourny, 2001).
Following the failure of traditional policies, a strong revitalization of the role played
by the citizens of advanced economies in influencing and regulating the economy
had taken place at various geographical levels. The re-emergence of the economic
and social commitment of third sector organizations was stimulated by the growing
limitations of the traditional welfare state that gradually appeared. (Borzaga and
Defourny, 2001).
Moreover, in this framework, on one side, in the developing countries the foreign
and local policies of governments, the policy of the non-profit organizations and
even the multilateral institutions (such as the World Bank and UN agencies) have
often failed to resolve major social problems. On the other side, the same
governments of "developed countries" are not yet able to provide a real response to
the problem of equal access to basic services, real involvement and active
participation of stakeholders and stable job opportunities and work conditions able to
integrate also disadvantaged citizen. Finally the recent economic crisis has clearly
underlined some critical aspects in the current economic system, which fails to
provide long term and sustainable answer to the interdependency principles and
social problems of global development.
This situation has highlighted the need of alternative economic, entrepreneurial and
social development structures ale to provide models and approaches to meet the
needs of at least a part of the problem. A configuration with a high potential interest,
probably not fully exploited up to date, is represented by the Social Enterprise (SE)
even if the circulation of legislative models and concrete experiences developed at
National level could lead to a partial convergence of models and common trends in
Europe. The social enterprise may represent a sort of innovative approach to a new
interpretation of the relationship between business and society with the objective to
create, drive and support the change by managing critical economical, social or
environmental issues.
At the basis of SE, there is the idea to transform the maximization of profit and
wealth creation – the final goal in the classical theory - in the means by which the
new social entrepreneurs achieve their business ideas to fulfil unmet social needs. As
a consequence, SE tends to prevail in emerging or developing countries, where
scarcity of resources and corruption have established the inadequacy of public and
government agencies to improve social conditions and promote development.
However, these models have been adopted also in developed countries, suggesting
non-traditional and economically sustainable methods to social inequality
realignments.