Abstract
Similar to many countries in Southeast Asia, social entrepreneurship has a long history in Thailand, tracing back to the 1970s. Despite the early start, social entrepreneurship has only started to gain ground in the 2010s when the Thai government started to establish a government body to support the promotion of social enterprise in Thailand—the Thai Social Enterprise Office. The Thai government pushed social entrepreneurship activities further by initiating the Pracharath Rak Samakee (ประชารัฐรักสามัคคี) social enterprise scheme, a scheme involves both national and provincial levels across Thailand. Using publicness theory perspectives (Bozeman, 1987), this chapter first provides an overview of the Thai government’s engagement in social entrepreneurship by period. We then further make sense of the Pracharath Rak Samakee social enterprise scheme. The unique structure of scheme brings in relatively high level of publicness, but at the same time, each social enterprise is to generate revenue as an enterprise instead of receiving government funds. The intriguing phenomenon prompts the chapter to look into some implications in the decision-making process in each of the social enterprise under such scheme. Finally, this book chapter explores ways for the scheme to manage the tension between public and private demands and suggestions in moving the social entrepreneurship ecosystem in Thailand forward to further develop the nation.
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Margiono, A., Feranita, F. (2023). Government Initiatives and Social Entrepreneurship in Thailand: Exploring the Role of Pracharath Rak Samakee Social Enterprise Scheme (ประชารัฐรักสามัคคี) and the Way Forward. In: Ratten, V. (eds) Heritage Entrepreneurship. Palgrave Studies in Global Entrepreneurship. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5149-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5149-7_2
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