Przedsiębiorczość społeczna w społeczeństwie obywatelskim w Polsce

This paper introduces the phenomenon of social entrepreneurship in the Polish civil society. It starts with a presentation of key determinants that have driven its development and popularity. In the main section, the complexity of social enterprise and entrepreneurship concepts are introduced, with their key characteristics. Following that, three dominant schools of thought on social enterprise are presented with reference to civil society phenomenon. Before locating social entrepreneurship, some key elements and methodological issues in the area of civil society are analyzed and discussed. Finally, two models of social enterprise are identified and their background briefly presented. The author supplements this analysis with some key statistics on social enterprise models for Poland. They introduce the reader into the state of the art of social enterprises in Poland. Also, valuable data from Global Entrepreneurship Monitor on social entrepreneurship are introduced to give the overall picture of the phenomenon in Central and Eastern European countries. Both analytical approaches are discussed in the light of the three schools of thought on social enterprise.