농촌지역 활성화와 일자리 창출을 위한 사회적기업 육성방안 연구(1/2차연도)

Abstract

사회 문제의 해결에 기업경영 방식을 도입한 것이 사회적기업이다. 사회적기업은 취약계층의 노동통합과 사회서비스 제공을 목적으로 시작되었는데, 시장과 정부의 실패로 인해 낙후된 농촌지역의 문제 해결을 위한 제3의 길로서 주목을 받고 있다. 2000년대 들어 농촌지역 재생을 위한 방안을 모색하는 민간 부문의 다양한 움직임과 정부와 지자체의 지원정책이 만나면서 여러 영역에서 사회적기업이 창업되고 있다. 그러나 한편에서는 농촌지역의 열악한 사업기반, 미흡한 기부문화와 사회적 투자자본, 인적 역량의 부족과 같이 사회적기업의 발전을 제약하는 요인도 적지 않다.

이 연구에서는 농촌지역에 소재한 사회적기업의 운영실태와 문제점을 파악하여 농촌 경제사회의 활성화에 기여할 수 있는 사회적기업의 발전 방향을 제시하고자 하였다. 이를 위해 제도적으로 인증받은 사회적기업뿐만 아니라 보다 광의의 사회적 경제 전반에 대한 조사를 실시하였다. 아울러 사회적기업의 역사가 앞서 있는 유럽과 일본의 참고할 만한 사례와 정책에 대한 조사도 병행하였다.

이 연구는 2년에 걸쳐 수행할 계획이다. 금년에는 실태분석과 과제의 제시에 중점을 두었으며 구체적인 발전방안은 2차년도의 과제로 하였다.

Recently, developing social enterprises is considered as the third way to vitalize depressed rural areas instead of government policy and market mechanism. But we have just few ideas of actual conditions and the potential roles of social enterprises in rural areas. The purposes of this study are to analyze their conditions and roles in rural development, and to suggest policy strategies to foster social enterprises. We carried out a survey targeting social enterprises in rural areas to review their real conditions, and analyzed their roles in endogenous rural development, business management performance and business capacity. We also performed in-depth case studies of Hoengseong-gun, Gangwon-do and Jinan-gun, Jeollabuk-do to look into the realities of social economies of rural areas and the roles of the individual social enterprises in rural vitalization. In terms of rural development, we found out that social enterprises are very conducive to endogenous rural development by local embeddedness of their input-output linkages, socio-economic networks and labor input, etc. Yet, some problems to be solved are also discovered. For instance, rural social enterprises lack outward linkages for accessing to more specialized resources such as finance, information, experts, and so forth. As for the analysis of their income and expenditure, majority of rural social enterprises are making ends met. In their incomes, 70 percent is made up of operating revenue and 30 percent is composed of non-operating income. But, because most of their non-operating income is originated from government support funds, many people are concerned about their business sustainability. For evaluation of business capacity of rural social enterprises, we analyzed their visions and strategies, organizational skills, human resources, organizational structures and systems, and organizational culture. As results, we found that rural social enterprises had commonly very weak capacity in terms of five valuation bases mentioned before. In addition, rural social enterprises lack of government support for improving their business capacities. As the result of this study, we suggested some policy strategies for fostering rural social enterprises as follows. First, the existing government certification system of social enterprises should be amended so that various voluntary and organizational efforts to improve difficult situations of rural areas can be appreciated as social enterprises. Second, business models of social enterprises suited to rural areas should be developed and disseminated. Third, a variety of agents acting in social economies should be discovered and fostered as social enterprises in rural areas. Lastly, government supports should be offered to strengthen business capacity of social enterprises based on cooperative networks among central, regional, and local governments.

Researchers: Nae-Won Oh, Sang-Jin Ma, Kwang-Sun Kim, Chang-Ho Kim and In-Hey Kwon Research Period: 2010.1~2010.10 E-mail Address: naewonoh@krei.re.kr