The “MOSE” project is addressed to the non profit sector, specifically in relation to the issues concerning training of managers in social enterprises.
The social and economic context of the European community has witnessed, in recent years, a tremendous expansion of the Third Sector – oftentimes defined as non profit sector or, more recently, social economy – especially in regards to its entrepreneurial dimension, today identified, at various levels, with the term social enterprise. The organisations which traditionally make it up stand for a sort of composite and uncertain juridical “midland”, situated between the State system and that of the Market as it focuses its action on the logic of giving and reciprocity, moving beyond the goal of profit and generating relationally. The Third Sector, for that matter, is made up of players which we can define as being “in the balance” between for profit enterprises (when they produce services of social utility) and exclusively vocational and advocacy organisations, and in any event delegated to producing “relational goods”3, based on reciprocally and tending towards improving the quality of life and the conditions of collective socio-psychical-physical and environmental wellness.
With that in mind, it is very important to highlight that the founding value of the non profit sector (and therefore of the social enterprise, which represents the more markedly “entrepreneurial” segment) is represented by human capital, that’s to say experience, skills, competencies, potential of which people are bearers. From this wealth, quite impossible to estimate quantitatively, no social system and no organisation intended as a subsystem can disregard, if aimed at growing and improving its own “performances”. The entire section of social economy acts on the background of empowerment processes on relational systems. The valorisation of people, enforced by an adequate training, may become for that reason the strong point of the social enterprises.
The topic of social enterprise implies competencies and objectives that question both social policies as well as economic and occupational ones, and which acknowledge in human resources the common denominator to the two areas of intervention. At the community level, in fact, the entire system of social economy is a topic of policies and actions whose competencies involve both the DG Employment and Social Affairs as well as the DG Enterprise (system of small enterprises, in which the social enterprises recognise themselves).
In any event, as just mentioned, the social enterprise does not yet have a unique model, at both the national and European level: it continues to express itself through varying shapes, at times overlapping and not clearly defined, above all when in regards to the juridical and organisational aspects, and the professional figures involved.
In greater detail, by analysing the impact of the new discipline of the social enterprise brought about in 2005 by the Social Policies Structure of ISFOL, it is possible to highlight, at the European level, the stating of two principal forms of social enterprise: one, aimed at fostering the work entry of disadvantaged players or at risk of working exclusion (that produces goods and services not exclusively of social character), while the other, marked towards producing and supplying services linked to a (implicit or explicit) demand for quality of life. But the information which appears to be the most significant is the difficulty shared by the organisations in their shift from social based loosely structured agencies, founded on powerful motivational drive but lacking adequate managerial models, to multi-stakeholder and multi-sector based structures, ever more complex and diversified, that require opening up to significant and innovative functions of middle and top management.
The MOSE project aims at focusing exactly on these managerial models and on the key professional figures for middle and top management. For this reason, the main target groups and potential users of the MOSE project are:
- social enterprises, which require an extremely elevated managerial structure, with specific and updated knowledge and competencies, capable of responding effectively and efficiently to its own mission, value-based and entrepreneurial, both at the national and European level;
- groupings, multi-level consortia, cooperatives and the social partners of the Third Sector, as these facilities often offer professional training services to small social enterprises, which are not able to take on the associated high costs of managerial training;
- public agencies which more and more, through the various areas of competency, manage a vast array of services with entrusting modes to players of the social private sector, with which shared practices and languages must be established although maintaining identities separate;
- educational and training bodies in general, that intend to apply the model and the content resulting from the project in the training actions of which they are promoters.
- managers that already operate in the social enterprise or in the public body, who wish to improve and enhance their own competencies and knowledge;
The MOSE proposal pursues the following main objective:
Conceive, implement, verify and validate an innovative model of professional training (defined as MODE Model) for social enterprises, which allow to:
Identify, define and describe the qualifications of top and middle management for social enterprises; in particular the following figures:
· social enterprise manager
· social economy expert
· social communication expert;
Identify, define and develop innovative training paths, based on a blended approach, that allows to take advantage of an apt blend of formal and non formal (informal) training, even through the use of modern computer technologies.
