Social enterprise profile in the Latvia regions

Abstract

As social entrepreneurs address various socio-economic problems in society, there has also been an increased interest in how social enterprises can support specific regions. In Latvia, social enterprises have been operating for a long time, but only recently the Social Enterprise Law was adopted, which regulates the tasks of social entrepreneurship and the support possibilities. This study highlights the level of entrepreneurship activity in the country as a whole (the number of enterprises and the number of newly established enterprises) and within individual statistical regions in the period from 2018 till 2020, analysing the structure of enterprises and indicators representative of entrepreneurship in Latvia and its regions: the dynamics of the number of enterprises per 100 000 inhabitants. The following hypothesis was made: Social entrepreneurship in the regions of Latvia has a disproportionate impact on socio-economic problems. It was found that social enterprises operate twice as much in Riga region as in any other region of Latvia, which has the lowest poverty index. However, the highest poverty index is found in Latgale region, where proportionally the lowest number of social enterprises operates. Social entrepreneurship can be a successful tool for addressing socio-economic problems in the regions and for regional development. For this development to take place, it would be necessary to develop instruments to support social entrepreneurship with the aim of improving the well-being of all regions, not only the region where the social enterprise operates.