Social Enterprise Recommendations Overview

1. Policy makers should take into account the need for counselling and training support for SEs.

2. Policymakers should take into account awareness-raising and for publicity actions. In this way, policy makers could spread the idea of social entrepreneurship and could attract public opinion as well as public and private actors, which would play the role of customers or providers for Social Cooperative enterprises. This could lead to a further development of the social entrepreneurship sector in Greece.

1. To determine the factors that can predict sustainable Social Cooperative enterprises beyond the period of the economic crisis.

2. Since this paper is based on the responses of Social Cooperative enterprises that were registered in the Social Economy Registry under Law 4019/2011, future research could examine Cooperative Social enterprises that ceased to operate and the reasons why they failed.

3. One could mention the need to address other social entrepreneurship stakeholders – public and private – in order to investigate their views regarding the factors contributing to the sustainability of Social Cooperative enterprises in Greece.

Prospective social entrepreneurs to understand the importance of: 1) networking, 2) support for their venture and 3) the need to build strong and multifaceted relationships with various actors in order to create a sustainable social enterprise.

1. Policymakers must develop a holistic institutional and regulatory environment for SEs to smooth the process of social innovation to achieve sustainable and relevant outcomes for society and organisations.

1. Future studies should focus on the motivational drivers and organisational learning of social entrepreneurs, exploring, for example, the issues related to employee maintenance and retention, performance appraisal, training and development of human resources in SE, and the role of theparticipative HRM and diversity climate in reducing relational conflicts in SEs.

2. Engagement of SEs in prominent social problems relating to gender difference, gender dicrimination, women and children rights and safety and women’s empowerment.

3. Adding additional parameters, such as the business models used, marketing strategies, and entrepreneurial challenges that have been largely missing in the existing articles.

4. Another useful research objective can be to study the alignment of social and financial objectives of SE, and their efforts and strategies to achieve this end.

5. Hybridity in SE business models, research in this dimension of SE has not yet achieved its full potential.

6. More comparative studies on social enterprise within a given industry from developed and developing countries.

7. Studies exploring the process and challenges of SE in different industries would be very insightful. It may also be useful to study SE business models and strategies in specific industry and country settings, or a homogenous set of the two.

8. Researchers should use mixed methods that involve both qualitative and quantitative approaches, because quantitative methods help to improve the validity of a study.

This paper advocates that educators should take a more holistic approach to developing social entrepreneurs that encompass individuals’ mental, emotional, spiritual and physical dimensions. Holistic training programmes could increase attention to social entrepreneurs’ thoughts and feelings, and enhance individuals’ awareness of limiting cognitive and emotional patterns. Such training alongside training in business start-up, marketing, and finance could enable more effective social and environmental value generation.

1. This paper advocates a more balanced approach to future (social) entrepreneurship research that considers entrepreneurs’ positive and negative internal (e.g. metacognitive, cognitive, emotional) and external (e.g. behavioural) aspects.

2. Future research might explore the interactions between the interior and exterior dimensions in the context of social entrepreneurship.

3. Future research could examine the surfaced mechanisms and the process model in large sample, hypothesis-testing studies.

This research encourages entrepreneurs to take the time to self-regulate through self-awareness practices especially when experiencing stress, time pressure, and disempowering thoughts and feelings.

1. Further research could study responses to typical tensions in social entrepreneurship in other socio-cultural contexts to construct respective frameworks and identify contextual factors affecting the understanding of social entrepreneurship.

2. Future research should be based on a larger sample in order to conduct more complete analyses of the tensions experienced by SEs in a certain socio-cultural context, clearly distinguishing between respondents from SEs de jure and de facto, and taking into account other countries

3. Further research could explore how the tensions are managed in more established/ mature SEs de jure and developing SEs de facto by case studies to make respective contribution to theory.

“Social enterprises have the capacity to become one of the most reliable partners of the central and/or local
authorities to tackle the social sphere and to promote inclusion into society
of persons of different vulnerable groups. So in order to stimulate this
partnership it is necessary on the basis of the existing legislative framework,
which outlines the legal framework for the activities of social enterprises, to
develop changes aimed at creating a more favorable economic environment
in which to social enterprises operate. Given that social enterprises are
essentially a business carried on by a legal non-profit entity, the tax laws
should provide appropriate relief, as well as to create more opportunities for
financing activities carried out by social enterprises with funds from budget,
municipal budget or various funds.”