Digital perspectives of social entrepreneurship in Western Balkan countries

Abstract

Digital technologies play an increasingly important role in our society. The ability to connect and interact quickly and efficiently becomes essential and digital skills are even more relevant for companies and individuals. The main objectives in paper are to show the growth potential possibilities of both the market and the social impact of the social enterprises, considering the digitalization of the same. Hence, the digitalization in Social Services in general sense, is define as the massive adoption of digital technologies to generate, process and share information and implement specific tasks via digital devices. Pandemic most explicitly shown us and taught us that there is great room for the digitization of many old and new businesses, especially in the social entrepreneurship in WBC as huge potential. The main focus of this paper is to increase the awareness of the concept of the Digital Social Entrepreneurship (DSE), as a combination of the social and digital aspects of entrepreneurship. Therefore, the possibilities and obstacles of these process in the Western Balkans countries (WBC) is considered. The results from the analysis in WBC, in the field of social enterprises gives overview of the current situation, which is underdeveloped. SEs in the WBC need to bridge the challenges they are facing in the everyday functioning and the digitalisation process. Theory and modern practices show thatdigitalisation in these services offer many possibilities and positive effects, including new opportunities for entrepreneurs, new companies/business, new and more productive jobs which leads to sustainable growth. This research recognized common issues when it comes to the challenges that countries are facing, and creates recommendations that might benefit social enterprise in their digitalisation. The issue of digitalisation is crucial for social economy enterprises, because the changes offer both challenges and opportunities. Indeed, new digital technologies enable quicker exchanges of best practices and offer tools to support the values of the social economy through new collaborative, shortcircuit and circular economic models, on which social economy actors could have a defining influence if they rise up to the task.