일반 논문 : 사회적 기업 육성을 위한 정부정책의 변화: 수요견인과 공급주도 이론의 탐색적 적용 = Regular Papers : An Exploratory Study on the Govermental Interventions for the Growth of Social Enterprises: Demand-Pull and Supply-Push

국문 초록 (Abstract)

사회적 소외와 실업 등의 사회적 현안 해결을 위한 혁신의 한 방법으로 주목받아 온 사회적 기업의 성공적인 육성에 필요한 토대와 환경을 조성하고, 개별 사회적 기업의 경영역량을 강화하기 위해서는 정부의 적극적인 역할이 필수적이다. 본 논문에서는 혁신산업 육성을 위한 정부개입을 분석하는데 주로 사용되어온 수요견인-공급주도와 영향-규제의 이론을 도입하여 사회적 기업의 지속적인 성장을 위한 정부개입의 방향과 범위, 한계에 대해 보다 체계적인 접근을 모색해 보고자 하였다. 이를 위하여 사회적 기업 육성의 성공적 사례로 평가되는 영국의 정부개입 사례를 분석하고 이를 국내의 사회적 기업 육성 정책과 비교하였다. 그 결과 그간의 한국 정부의 사회적 기업 육성정책이 ``정부 주도적 공급정책`` 임을 확인할 수 있었다. 앞으로 정부 개입의 효율성을 확보하기 위해서는 사회적 기업의 수용 및 활용을 위한 수요중심적인 연구를 지원하고, 상징적이고 나열적인 지원보다 구체적인 수요영역을 설정하고 그 안에서 성장과 운영의 지속성을 확보할 수 있도록 제도화시켜야 할 것이다.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Social enterprises have been regarded as an innovative solution to address impending social issues such as social exclusion, unemployment, etc. It is the government that has been expected to take an active role in developing and enhancing corporate capabilities of social enterprises. However, there has been little research on the governmental interventions on social enterprises from a systematic perspective. In an effort to explore the desirable directions, scope, and limits of governmental interventions for the successful development of social enterprises, we review a theoretic framework of demand-pull and supply-push integrated with institutional choices in exercising specific policies: influence and regulation. The theoretic framework in this study is introduced by King et al.(1994) who attempted to address various issues arisen from social changes such as economic development and technological innovation. They integrated economic theories of demand-pull and technology-push with neoinstituionalism to derive potential intervention actions by institutions on those issues. When institutions exercise those actions, they have the choice of influence and/or regulation. Influence is a persuasive approach to change practice, rules, and belief systems embedded in a society through education, articulation, and resource allocations (Kimberly 1979). On the contrary, regulation deals with social changes through conflicts, distributed decision making, and controls over the flow of capital and structure of social order (Boyer, 1988a, 1988b). From the supply-push perspective, innovation advocates support the production of artifacts. This requires provisions of scientific knowledge, investments for research and development, and the adjustment of artifacts according to market demands. Meanwhile, the school of the demand-pull perspective emphasizes users` will to adopt innovation. It is also said that the interaction between supply and demand is critical to the success of innovation and changes along the degree of technological knowledge, complementary/supplementary items, and the degree of conversion of needs to demands (David 1975; Freeman 1988; Rosenberg 1972). In the King et al.(1994)`s theoretic framework, institutions` options of choice are further segmented by supply-push and demand-pull. By placing appropriate policy actions in each segment, institutions can formulate a macroscopic policy strategy to stimulate productions of innovative artifacts and the market environment that consumes these artifacts. Policy actions presented in the theory are knowledge building, knowledge deployment, subsidy, standard setting, and innovation directive. Throughout this study, the underlying assumption of the application of King et al.(1994)`s theoretic framework is that social enterprises` operations rely on economic activities and market mechanisms. To ensure the success of social enterprises, institutions should control and manage not only social enterprises, but also the market environment. In addition, institutions must build social capacity in order to stimulate fast adoption and usage, and changes in attitude and value systems which are hard to be made without institutions` interventions. Furthermore, the incorporation of the concept of market environment and social capacity into issues of social enterprise will lead us to explore more systematic approaches to the issues of social enterprise. In these regards, we assume it is a meaningful approach to study governmental interventions on social enterprise from King et al.(1994)`s theoretic framework. We test the application of King et al.(1994)`s theoretic framework on the UK government. Action plans presented in the government archive (SEA Plan 2006) are analyzed and coded based on the definitions and instances in the theoretic framework. By promoting researches on various subjects, this analysis presents the UK government`s intentions to change social attitude toward social enterprise. These subjects range from the value and the management of social enterprise to measures for financial support, which involves modification of existing finance systems. We show that the UK government utilizes social enterprise in the health and social care service sector by offering institutional supports. We also present the systematic bottom line of the UK government policy to secure operations of social enterprise by ensuring business areas (i.e., waste strategy). Thus, we identify the goal of the UK government policy as promoting the growth of social enterprise. They do so by incorporating the pushing supply and the pulling demand of social enterprises simultaneously.. We further search for practical implications of the analysis of UK governmental policy on social enterprise by comparing it with that of the Korean government. The comparison of the two cases shows that many actions discovered in the UK government policy seem to be adopted by the Korean government as well. Compared to the UK, the Korean government focuses less on demand-side research, which increases the capability to adopt social enterprises. Especially, we could identify there is no action in the segment of regulation and demand-pull, which indicates that the Korean government has no practical policy on the creation of secure markets for services and products of social enterprises. Despite many similarities in the policy actions of both countries, we identify three major differences: subsidy, standard settings, and innovation directives. In the subsidy, the data shows that the UK government has taken relatively more actions in the segment of regulation and demand-pull than the Korean government. This indicates that the UK government allocates more resources to legally secure and ensure markets for social enterprise than the Korean government does. Meanwhile, Korea turns out to place more subsidies in the segment of influence and supply-push compared to the UK. This difference arises from the fact that the Korean government allocates more resources to direct expenses of social enterprises such as labor expense, consulting, and advisory services for operations with relatively less resources allocated in the production of market demands for services and products of social enterprises. Another difference between the intervention policies of the two countries lies in their standard settings such as enacting regulations and legislations. Compared to the UK government, the Korean government has more policy actions belonging to standard settings regarding the qualification and operations of social enterprises, which also reveal the supply-focused characteristics of the Korean government`s policy. The most conspicuous difference between the two governments are their innovation directives. Compared to the direct measures of the UK government policy that has limited focus on certain industries, the Korean government encourages the development of social enterprises in diverse areas such as future growth in the industry, as well as conversion of welfare jobs. In sum, we characterize that the Korean government`s intervention policy on social enterprise is a ``government directive supply-push`` whereas that of the UK government is relatively demand-focused. In order for the innovation to succeed, this study concludes that the Korean government policy needs to be more balanced between supply-push and demand-pull. To do so, the Korean government is suggested to promote researches on the market environment, users` attitude, and belief system. It is also required to encourage the users to actively interact with social enterprises. At the same time, the government should make sure to support the production of social enterprises. Otherwise, the goals embedded in policy actions can be merely symbolic and impractical. By doing so, the Korean government is able to assure the market environment, which will provide sustainable operations and growth of social enterprises by allocating its resources more efficiently. Throughout this study, we examined theoretic approaches to analyze government interventions for social enterprises in a systematic way, enabling us to identify differences in policy actions and to explore potential directions in the governmental policies on social enterprises. The finding of this study has limitations on generalizability in that the number of cases involved is limited. Further researches with more cases are expected to produce more generalized and practical views of governmental intervention on social enterprises.