Exploring Romania in Search of Social Economy: the Concept of Social Economy Studied in the Light of Protected Units

Social economy is a new concept used to define that part of economy in which the activities of organizations are aimed at improving social welfare and secondarily at increasing the profit and benefits. The European and Romanian legislative framework authorize the establishment of certain organization as participants of social economy. The research is focusing on protected units, as organization of social economy taking in consideration the economic and social criteria proposed by researchers. The main purpose is to show the importance of protected units. The specific objectives of this paper are to set the boundaries of the social economy concept based on the review of the important theories and to describe a sector of Romanian social economy from protected units approach. The results will show the evolution of the sector in a period of four years which coincide with the implementation of The Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development.