A socio-economic analysis of the institutional trajectory of social enterprise: the case of South Korea

As a unique case in Asia, South Korea has developed for about 15 years a complex eco-system for encouraging the promotion of various forms of social enterprises, i.e. enterprises pursuing a social aim and/or operating under a democratic governance. This paper analyses the institutional trajectory of social enterprise in Korea and its close relation with the concept of social economy. A socio-economic analysis of this trajectory reveals that it is strongly driven by successive consensus towards socially useful organisational forms that remain first relatively unknown and local, and then tend to attract the attention of a growing number of stakeholders, including central and local governments, to eventually generate specific public schemes and laws. Through this analysis, one can understand how far an economic concept like social enterprise is the result of a social construct that depends on the involvement of the public side and the civil society and social movement. It also stresses how important is the decisive role played by relatively minor actors to generate a consensus between different stakeholders and disseminate thus social innovation to reshape public action and public/private forms of partnerships.