Barriers and Opportunities for the Development of Social Entrepreneurship: Case Study of Czech Republic

Social enterprises are becoming a powerful and effective tool for the employment of disadvantaged people in the labour market and are an effective took of state and local governments in the fight against social exclusion, rising unemployment and segregation of excluded localities. To identify the main barriers to the activities of social enterprises a questionnaire survey was used. The form was distributed to 100 social enterprises, the selection was random and use was made of the Directory of social enterprises on the České sociální podnikání.cz website. The paper aims at identifying the main barriers and opportunities to the activities of social enterprises. The conclusions are drawn on the basis of a questionnaire survey conducted in social enterprises. The main barriers to the development of social enterprises are the non-existence of the social entrepreneurship act – the organisations are primarily business corporations, insufficient determination of whether the business is an integration social enterprise and what criteria should be fulfilled. Social enterprises are not supported by public processes – such as socially responsible public procurement. What is also missing is a system of financial support for social enterprises. The originality of this work lies in studying some aspects of barriers in social business. The Czech Republic is among the countries that discover the benefits of social entrepreneurship, especially at the regional level.