사회적 기업에 대한 재정지원 방안의 개선에 관한 연구

Abstract

Social enterprises can contribute to the society by diverse means, such as creating jobs, providing social services and improving environment. Of course, social enterprises cannot solve all the problems that may occur in a modern capitalistic society. However, social enterprises can supplement the weaknesses of modern capitalism, which may arise in the public and social areas such as welfare and environment. They in particular have business models that can benefit the socially vulnerable. Therefore, development of social enterprises can provide great opportunities in order for our society to achieve further advancement. However, most of Korean social enterprises are still in the level of small business. That’s why social enterprises rely heavily on government’s financial supports. Although we do not deny the need for governmental supports for social enterprises, excessive reliance on them would not help to raise the self-sufficiency of Korean social enterprises. Also, current financial plans for social enterprises cannot make sufficient effects because they support for too short periods. Increasing the duration of supporting for labor costs of social enterprises will result in supporting in the most needed time periods. In addition, current financial aid plans concentrate on supporting for only labor costs to employ the socially vulnerable. This may be a constraint on the recruitment of the labor force required by the social enterprises. Considering the characteristics of the industries related with social enterprises, it is necessary to apply differentiation to the social enterprises. In the long run, supports for social enterprises should be done by the private sector rather than by the central or local governments. To this end, a social stock exchange is needed to facilitate the financing of social enterprises. It would be easier to use the KONEX market for SMEs. It should be noted, however, that it is necessary to make sure that investors are aware of the risks and that investors should be limited only to social investors excluding ordinary investors, since investing in social enterprises is totally different from investing in stocks of ordinary corporations. Finally, it is naturally necessary for the government to reduce supports for those social enterprises that can raise funds through social stock exchanges. On the other hand, social enterprises which are not corporations legally can not use social stock exchanges. Hence, it can raise the efficiency if the government concentrates more on these social enterprises, which are not legal corporations, in terms of financial aids.