Contending Pathways of Social Enterprise Incubation and the Questions of Sustainability in South Korea

Abstract

This paper tres to identify three different growth patterns of social economy: government support, enterprise sponsorship, and civil engagement. Those three ways are not mutually exclusive but reinforcing as well as competing among themselves. This paper tries to address proposal that strong but tense relationship among government, private sector, and civil society will be a key factor for the long-term sustainability and firm establishment of social economy in Korea. Policy measures and approaches focusing on nurturing healthy ecology of social economy with transparent principles would also be very important. In order to sustain and activate the genuine functions of social economy, building smarter alliances among government, companies, civil society are very important. By approaching the problem of social economy from the viewpoint of sustainable ecology of social economy, we may be able to invent more effective and desirable means for maintaining a creative tension among major actors and their design frameworks in their participation of social economy. This research is a trial to present this argument by representing successful case stories and newly emerging trends in Korea.