Cooperative and social enterprises are gaining an increasing relevance in transition countries as path-away out of social exclusion. These institutions can be regarded as a beneficial dynamic that can have a relevant impact upon the economic and social development both at national and local level, as they provide access to basic public interest services (social, educational, health, etc.) to local communities, including people who are unable to pay; contribute to a more balanced use and allocation of resources; generate new employment; play a role in enhancing the social capital that is accumulated at the local level; and play a part in taking informal activities out of the underground economy.
Against this background, cooperative and social enterprises provide both an attractive intellectual paradigm and an effective programmatic area for intervention to address a number of crucial economic and social issues, including the existence of several pockets of poverty (e.g. people with disabilities, minority groups, etc.) and problems of inequality and social exclusion. Overall, a growing number of researchers are being involved in studies concerning this theme, but they are mainly exploring specific aspects individually with the prevalence of country and sector-specific focuses. Thus, emerges a still restricted knowledge about such forms of enterprise. More specifically, very few studies applied to former Soviet Union and Balkan countries are available. The aim of this research is to assess the contribution of cooperative and social enterprises to socio-economic development in four transition countries, namely: Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, and Serbia.
This study is multidisciplinary, drawing on economics, sociology, law, and history, and it mainly relies on an empirical analysis.
Scientific coordinator: Giulia Galera, Euricse
Partners: EMES (European Research Network); University of Trento; ICARE
(Armenia); Oracul (Belarus); SESPS (Ukraine); Faculty of Philosophy – University
of Belgrade – Institute for Sociological Research (UBFP-ISR) (Serbia)
