This post was recovered from an article posted on   2013-10-22 07:12:38

[ Photo: crcarch201310220712a]

Economics and business, without losing their predominant focus on getting the maximum material benefits from the utilization of the relatively scarce resources of society, nevertheless can always be instruments for attaining societal goals—goals such as the alleviation of poverty, the greening of the environment, the nurturing of stable marriages and families, through family-friendly social and corporate policies, and the promotion of civic virtues.

Jose Maria G. Mariano, Ph.D.

CRC President

The Need for a New Perspective on Business

Mr. Leo Parma, founder of Asiapro Multi-Purpose Cooperative and UA&P alumnus, sounded a call for business to address social needs when he established the Leo Parma- Asiapro Professorial Chair for Social Entrepreneurship:

In SBEP (Strategic Business Economics Program) I was introduced to ideas like social responsibility, profit sharing, distribution of wealth. And at the time I was in HR Consulting which included manpower services. And that was really a struggle for me because it was a difficult way of doing business in a particular industry where workers are replaced every so often. Out there, there are hundreds of thousands of contingent workers. We should definitely impact the marginalized workers (L. Parma, Aug. 15, 2012).

With the creation of the Professorial Chair, social entrepreneurship has become an official research theme of the University Research Agenda.

[ Photo: crcarch201310220712b]

The Nature of Social Entrepreneurship

Bernardo M. Villegas, Ph.D., economist and co-founder of UA&P, illustrated the concept of social entrepreneurship:

I would like to especially cite the new concept of “social enterprise,” entrepreneurship for a social objective. What is a social objective? It is to identify certain needs of human beings that are not 100 percent served by the market economy. A social enterprise is an organization that is as well-run as a San Miguel Corporation or a Bank of the Philippine Islands, but whose objective is to use its profits to continue expanding its services to the underprivileged.

In addition, social enterprise has two key characteristics: • Needs identification, determining the community’s social needs which the entrepreneur can address most effectively; and •Partnership building, forming alliances and networks with other social enterprises, cooperatives, NGOs and government.