Principles of social innovation, social entrepreneurship and circular economy in the work of community development banks: an analysis through the perception of their managers

Abstract

Faced with the contradictions of the capitalist system, marked by social inequalities, unbridled competition and intense exploitation of natural resources, the search for economic alternatives that mitigate these inequalities and promote social and financial inclusion has been gaining attention.  This research aims to investigate the relationship between some of the practices of these new forms of economy. As such, it seeks to analyze how the principles, dimensions and characteristics of social innovation (SI), circular economy (CE) and social entrepreneurship (SE) have been incorporated into the actions of Community Development Banks so that this solidarity finance model achieves its objectives. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 7 community bank managers. The script consisted of 40 questions, applied between October and November 2023 and divided into five broad categories. The interpretative analysis of the corpus used content analysis. It was possible to conclude that the banks are not limited to the framework of solidarity economy initiatives. These organizations are social innovators, incorporate principles of social entrepreneurship and are concerned with carrying out practices characteristic of the circular economy. The work is relevant as it contributes to bringing the concepts of these new forms of economy closer together, as well as greater integration between the initiatives, while also contributing to the improvement of existing actions through the incorporation of new practices.