Social economy and social entrepreneurship: An exercise of social responsibility

One of the issues that have attracted substantial research interest is represented by the occurrence of the third sector, often called "social economy", "non-profit sector", "social sector", "sector of the civil society". Amid the challenges of the social responsibility which should be assumed both by the public, as well as private sector organizations, a new term is strongly promoted, reflecting not only social changes, but also the conceptions and attitudes of people and organizations regarding the undertaking of new responsibilities needed to solve social problems. In Romania, the term of social entrepreneurship is rather new and almost unknown to the wide public, and legislative projects do not sufficiently regulate or promote a reference frame which would enable the development of this activity sector. Moreover, lack of clarity in defining the concepts and its various interpretations contribute to broadening the scope of this activity domain and the "entrepreneurial spirit", so that it includes various agents such as founders of non-profit organizations or persons who, by starting a business, also undertake social responsibility in how they approach the activity and operate inside the organization. The paper reviews the recent literature on the conceptualization and definition of social economy and social entrepreneurship, at the European and national level. This paper proposes an evaluation of social entrepreneurship in Romania, in terms of its potential for development on the medium-term. The analysis of documents, reports of public or private institutions and development policies, is used to develop a theoretical framework of the social economy and social entrepreneurship, as well as to describe the social entrepreneurship as a sector of activity in Romania, its development potential, as an exercise of social responsibility.