Economic Crisis: Helping, Harnessing or Harming Social Enterprise for Human Resource Development?

The harm that financial crises, such as the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis or the current global financial crisis, brings to many as jobs are lost and prices rise, can be extreme. For some, as both markets collapse and states fail to provide much needed goods, services, and income protection, the experience that such crises bring - such as a sudden loss of livelihood - is new, full of uncertainty and fear.For others, especially the most marginalized and disadvantaged members of a community who have already failed to find a secure footing in the market economy, financial crisis merely compounds the difficulties they face. For them, irrespective of whether there is a global financial crisis or not, uncertainty and fear as to the future sustainability of their existence, are part and parcel of their normal daily experiences. But, does this have to be the case? Are there alternatives, for example, such as social enterprises, that can generate hope, and both practical and sustainable support? Or is it that social enterprises themselves are being harmed and falling victim to the financial crisis? In either case, what practical support and help can communities and their governments give to social entrepreneurs and social enterprises now, so as to maintain and enhance the undoubted benefits, including sustainable employment, that social enterprises can generate?The paper begins by noting first, the steady, decade-long international growth in the development of social enterprises by community groups, civil society organizations and networks, individual social entrepreneurs, governments and even businesses that wish to be more socially responsible. It reviews how social enterprises have been developing out of different traditions and values of cooperative enterprise, social innovation and entrepreneurship and in regional clusters such as in Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Latin America, Australia and in our own EROPA region. The paper asks what the critical social, economic and political factors for social enterprise survival are likely to be and concludes by discussing what policies are likely not just to help prevent the demise of social enterprises but to facilitate, support and possibly harness the valuable contributions that social enterprise can make to sustainable human resource development.