SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN CROATIA - OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Social entrepreneurship can be found in any kind of organization - from state schools to a retail business. Organizations which belong to sector social entrepreneurship have focus on social problems and initiate social change. Social entrepreneurship in Croatia has not yet received the right opportunity. Individual efforts exist, but the real momentum and for meaningful results require systematic support of all social structures, education and networking. Social entrepreneurship in practice faces with major obstacles and any attempt to systematically work on recruitment more difficult employ categories of society faces problems: lack of professional managerial structure capable of managing such enterprise, and sometimes even employees are not proficient enough; insolvency of civil society organizations in social enterpreneurship; very easy ability to turn into a gray zone of operations, primarily due to legal loopholes, and lack of sufficient support programs, political and general public are not sufficiently familiar with the concept and benefits of social entrepreneurship. The aim of this paper is to analyze the current state of social entrepreneurship in Croatia and defining the direction of development of social entrepreneurship in Croatia in the future.