Conference System, VII Research Workshop on Institutions and Organizations

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Solidarity Economy in perspective: a literature review
Lucelia Costa

Last modified: 2012-09-16

Abstract


Keywords: Solidarity Economy; Development; Entrepreneurship; Public Policy.

 

The Solidarity Economy is a way to organize workers, especially those outside the labor market, so that they can get income or can handle with the lack of it. In this movement, the workers have ownership of the means of production and distribution, there is not, therefore, separation of ownership and labor. In addition, all members have the same power of decision and are responsible for managing the enterprise.

For an organization to be considered an economic solidarity enterprise (ESE), the actions of the worker-members must be guided by three principles: solidarity (seen as mutual/reciprocal aid), cooperation (understood as act jointly searching for a common goal) and self-management (when the worker-members are responsible for managing and making decisions in their enterprises).

In Brazil, the Solidarity Economy gained greater representation with the creation, in 2003, of the Secretaria Nacional de Economia Solidária – SENAES (National Bureau of Solidarity Economy). This bureau is headed by Professor Paul Singer and linked to the Ministry of Labour – showing the importance of this movement as an alternative source of employment and income in the country.

The SENAES develops several activities to stimulate the Solidarity Economy, one of them is the SIES – Sistema Nacional de Informações em Economia Solidária (National Information System on the Solidarity Economy) – a survey on how the ESE are distributed among the economic activities in Brazil.

From the data obtained with the SIES is possible to notice that the Brazilian Solidarity Economy extends to various fields of economic activity, from agriculture to the garment industry, through the extraction and the provision of services.

One way to help strengthen this movement is to increase the debate about it and thereby generate new knowledge. The debate and the generation of knowledge allow more people start to think of Solidarity Economy and thereby contribute to its development.

The main objective of this work is, through a systematic review, present the Solidarity Economy from three perspectives: development, entrepreneurship and public policy.

 

 

For Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics, the development must be seen as freedom, that is, it is not enough that people of a particular place have a satisfactory income in order that this place is considered to be developed, is needed to have freedom. It can be categorized into five types: political freedom, ease economic, social opportunities, guarantees of transparency and protective security.

Another perspective is the entrepreneurship. Generally it is described as the action of a visionary and courageous person who identifies a market opportunity and that takes a "calculated" risk when opening a business to take advantage of this opportunity. However, this is only one type of entrepreneurship – opportunity’s entrepreneurship – there is also one of necessity. In this case, the individual, due to a need, for example, loss of income, opens a business, often, casual.

Finally, there are public policies. They are the actions of governments that aim to benefit the space that govern and citizens who inhabit this space. An important aspect of public policy is that it should be a State policy and not a Government policy, as well, even with the alternation of power, it would remain.

The systematic review will be guided by these three perspectives and will be made by two bases of academic journals, in the "Google Scholar" and in the "Web of Science". With this is believed to be possible to present the state of the art and to build paths to new discussions about the Solidarity Economy.

 


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