Proposal of Alternative Typology of Social Economy

The aim of the article is to present an alternative proposal of division to the dominant one in the discourse of the social economy division into old and new entities of social economy, to understand and create a possibility to describe the manifestations of this social and economic phenomenon. For the purposes of this paper, the following order of definitions was adopted. Social economy is understood here as an area of interdisciplinary, theoretical considerations, whereas social entrepreneurship is defined as types of organized business practices, also going beyond the existing legal framework for social responsibility, positively evaluated in relation to social and symbolic values, meeting the requirement of economic rationality1. Social enterprises are therefore both old and new social economy entities, and other types of entities in an open market that balance their economic and social goals. The article is a development of the considerations presented in the dissertation entitled Determinants of diversity in social entrepreneurship types in Poland.