2014, Article / Letter to editor (The Review of International Comparative Management, vol. 15, iss. 2, (2014), pp. 154-173)Recent efforts of the European Union to integrate new member states such as Romania expand to the social economy sector as well. Works by Hoogendoorn et al. (2010) and Kerlin (2010) regard Europe as accommodating two schools of thought related to social entrepreneurship: EMES and the UK - social enterprise. Both views place great emphasis on social enterprise as the main indicator of the social entrepreneurial phenomena for the European continent.
2014, Article / Letter to editor (International Journal of Business and Globalisation, vol. 13, iss. 4, (2014), pp. 502-518)We present insights from literature on enterprising behaviour and competence followed by an application of the competence perspective. Data collection is based on the critical incident technique among 205 entrepreneurs. The study shows how entrepreneurial behaviour benefits from an integrating competence perspective, underlining that entrepreneurs do need different competences related to different outcomes in their entrepreneurial endeavours. An additional study was done to test a survey on competence dimensions that were developed based on the findings of the CIT. The survey shows five competence dimensions. Entrepreneurial behaviour is not about learning a single set of competences, it is rather an integrating system of competences. Some of them can be taught, while others need to be experienced and tried out.
2014, Article / Letter to editor (International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, (2014))Social entrepreneurship has been defined until now by borrowing insights from commercial, Schumpeterian entrepreneurship as well as a new way of looking at non-profit work (Peredo and McLean, 2006; Short et al., 2009). Inspired by the use of a competence perspective to define entrepreneurship (European Commission, 2005), our main purpose in this article is to apply a competence perspective to social entrepreneurship, using a multidimensional framework. We start by looking at social entrepreneurship in the context of commercial entrepreneurship research. Next, we describe the concepts of competence and entrepreneurial competence as building blocks for our view. Then we describe the research of the concept of competence for social entrepreneurship among 103 founders of social enterprises in Romania. Our main findings suggest that social entrepreneurship competence is comprised of a large spectrum of social and functional competences (rather than cognitive competence) and motivation to solve social problems.
2014, Article in monograph or in proceedings (RENT XXVIII Entrepreneurship Conference)In the context of a globalizing world, as we experience today, organizations put emphasis on self-employment and more entrepreneurial behavior of individuals/employees, as ways to cope with this globalizing and to achieve competitive advantages. Next to venture creation, the element of "entrepreneurial behaviour" also begins to gain more attention, as the labour market shows a need for more entrepreneurial acting employees within the organization, and not only venture creators.
2013, Article in monograph or in proceedings (Cinet 2013)As more and more research work is dedicated to the concept of entrepreneurial behaviour, more attention is also given to the teaching or training of such behaviour. In this paper we argue that a new integrative management approach, labeled as "gyroscopic management" (Vinke & Orhei, 2010, 2012), is one of the ways to stimulate, educate and train such behaviour among the representatives of the so-called Generation Y. In order to create evidence of such presumption we present the first data obtained as part of a grounded action research which started in January.
2013, Part of book or chapter of book (, pp. 31-50)Onderzoek naar competenties in het algemeen en naar de benodigde competenties voor ondernemers in het bijzonder is volop in beweging. Onderzoek in het verleden heeft vanuit verschillende invalshoeken en met verschillende doeleinden plaatsgevonden en is daarom veelal niet generaliseerbaar. Daarom worden meerdere theorieën onderscheiden. Het onderzoek naar competenties is met een start in de 90-er jaren nog relatief nieuw en is international georiënteerd. Het onderzoek kan branchegericht zijn (denk aan de gezondheidszorg), het kan van toepassing zijn op het onderwijs (competentiegericht onderwijs), relaties hebben met human resource management (aanstellen van personeel), maar ook gericht zijn op ondernemen. De vraag die dan opgeroepen wordt, luidt: welke competenties zijn van belang voor succesvol ondernemen? Hier is veel onderzoek naar gedaan, maar de uitkomsten zijn (helaas) niet eenduidig. Op zich geen vreemde uitkomst, omdat culturen, nationaliteiten, branches en levenscycli dwars door dit soort onderzoeken heen lopen (zie literatuuroverzicht hierna). Om te laten zien waar we nu staan als het gaat om ondernemerschap, onderzoeken we voornoemde vraagstelling.
2013, Article in monograph or in proceedings ()The construct of competence is explained through several approaches: individual, training, human resources, management, and entrepreneurial. Competences can be explained by different concepts such as knowledge, understanding, skills and behavior. In the literature there is a trend towards a holistic multidimensional approach. This paper focuses on a study to induce relevant competencies in the start-up process of entrepreneurs.
2013, Article in monograph or in proceedings (4th EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise)Social entrepreneurship is currently at an early stage of knowledge development, both on the European Continent, as well as internationally. To a large extent, studies originate from theory, are based on small-scale individual case studies or have identified social entrepreneurship based on an incomplete definition.
2012, Article / Letter to editor (The Journal of the Faculty of Economics - Economic, vol. 1, iss. 2, (2012), pp. 756-762)The current paper is aimed at identifying the social enterprises according to EMES criteria by investigating the social economy actors in Romania. As an emerging field of study, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have captured the attention of both practitioners from Europe and North America, and in recent years on other continents. In Romania, very little research has been conducted into the field, mostly as part of academic research papers from doctoral study students or masters, both from Romania and abroad. In Europe, several studies have been conducted among member state of the European Union, to bring to light this new emerging field.. Investigations in regard to social entrepreneurship in Europe have revealed the existence of this field among social economy actors, in the form of social enterprise, namely work integration social enterprises and social cooperatives. So far, Romania has not been included in them This papers tries to fill the gap of knowledge on this phenomena, by exploring, from a European perspective, the actors of social entrepreneurship in Romania. The methodology used was an analysis of secondary data in the form of legal documents (laws), reports of the social economy sector and scholarly articles related to social entrepreneurship in Romania. The assessment instrument is the EMES set of economic and social criteria that the social enterprises need to meet. Also, parallels have been made with the entities of the same nature in the European Union. The paper concludes on the state of social enterprise in Romania, with an underline on what its and implications for their further study. As main finding, two types of organizations fit best with the EMES criteria, authorized protected units and companies set up by associations and foundations. Also, further developments are expected as Romania is preparing for a law defining the social enterprise and social economy. The main implications of this research is drawing the lines, in the current state of the social economy who are the actors that can best fit with the concept of social enterprise in Romania. Our main contribution to the study of social entrepreneurship is to investigate what European scholars have done with most of the existing member state countries. Using the EMES criteria in the social economy sector in Romania has yet to have been done till this point.
2011, Part of book or chapter of book (, pp. 87-106)This paper is aimed at presenting a theoretical definition for the construct of social entrepreneurship as competence for the social economy in Europe. This definition is part of a study that was designed and developed in two phases. This paper will present only the results of the first one: the formulation of a hypothetical model for social entrepreneurship as competence in social economy. The formulation is based on specifications of the concepts of competence and social entrepreneurship, as a result of extensive literature review, and analysis of theoretical considerations. The result is a model that was constructed on the multidimensional holistic approach to competence, using Austin e. al. (2006) definition of social entrepreneurship to describe the outcomes of the competence, within the framework of the social economy in Europe. The next step will be validation of the construct with a selected target group based in Romania and the Netherlands as geographical regions within the social economy in Europe.