Social entrepreneurship competences, coems: overview through university educational programs in Latin America and Spain

Abstract

In the last decades, social entrepreneurship is rapidly gaining importance worldwide and many universities have made great efforts to include entrepreneurship education as part of their mission. Thus, higher education institutions are increasingly assuming responsibility towards society, and within its entrepreneurial process, as well as developing an “entrepreneurship culture”. However, a social entrepreneurship education common framework is needed, as well as an agreement on the competences to promote in order to develop social entrepreneurs.

This article aims to contribute to the reflection upon the competences needed by reviewing and analysing the literature. In addition, the proposal arisen through the literature review is put under consideration while addressing the competences developed by actual university training programs on the topic. Thus, the theoretical analysis is contrasted with the results obtained by a piece of research about university education programs on social entrepreneurship.This study is part of a broader research project, called University Social Innovation and Responsibility Model, an Alfa-Tuning Latin American Project 2011-2013, funded by the European Commission. As part of this study, an analysis was carried out on the kind of competences addressed by the educational programs under research. For this purpose, seven training programs from universities in Latin America and Spain were selected and a documentary analysis of each program was carried out.

As a result of the literature review and the documentary analysis of the programs, a classification of social entrepreneurship competences, COEMS, was defined, this is described in this article. The classification consists of four blocks of competences aiming to develop students’ capacities globally. As an example of the development of each block of competences, a particular education program described, due to the significance work achieved in relation to those competences. The block of philosophical and ethical competences, COEMS 4, must be particularly underlined, because it is considered fundamental in order to promote learners’ social commitment, an essential characteristic of the future social entrepreneurs’ identity.