The incidence and impact of social enterprises within El Salvador

Abstract

This article allows us to describe the growing impact that the so-called “fourth sector” has within Salvadoran society. Social entrepreneurship arises from the shortcomings of traditional sectors such as the private sector, whose main purpose is profit, leaving aside the resolution of social problems, and the non-profit sector, which despite contributing to the development of social, environmental and charitable objectives, often lacks a sense of sustainability in the medium and long term. Social enterprises seek to take the best of both sectors, on the one hand, they seek to achieve a beneficial impact on society as do civil society organizations and foundations, and on the other hand they take the business model and structure of many successful companies to ensure self-management without depending on third-party financing. In the present work, the incentives or impediments presented by national policies for the formation of new social entrepreneurship initiatives will be identified, for this purpose, the National Entrepreneurship Policy promulgated by the “Comisión Nacional de la Micro y Pequeña Empresa” in 2014. Due to the lack of bibliography on this topic at the national level, an exploratory study has been chosen to analyze the public, private / non[1]governmental spheres and directly the opinion of social entrepreneurs. This article is based on the premise that social entrepreneurship represents a viable and sustainable alternative to fight against handouts that often entails the execution of traditional social impact projects.