Analysis Of The Guldsmeden Hotel

The researchers deem it quintessential to set the stage by touching on one of the major themes of their field of study - social economy (SE). Such an exploration is necessary as we are dealing with a case – The Guldsmeden Hotel – whose commercial activities are interlaced with several social activities and as such showing signs quite typical to that of social economy organizations. For instance, aside operating as a commercial hotel, the hotel persists on the need for a balanced sustainability angle to its operations. Further, the management of the Hotel on annual basis does donates some of its bike renting proceeds to the Children’s Heart Foundation (Guldsmeden, 2016). Further, the researchers by such an exploration would contribute to the
2008). More so, from an empirical perspective, there exist links between local development and social economy organizations (ibid). Guldsmeden Hotel for instance employs a diverse section of individuals into its workforce. Moreover, it assists the police and other groups in the fight against crimes mostly peddled around the hotels’ vicinity (Guldsmeden, 2016). Regardless of how enormous their contribution maybe, little if not less attention has been paid to the research and further development of social economy and so-called social economy organizations (Noya, A. et al. 2008). After all, just like the economist Milton Friedman (1970) suggested, the only social responsibility of businesses is to make profit. This popular guess about the social angles of businesses could perhaps be an attributing factor to why much research is not focused on social economy
Charles Gide is credited to have given these organizations a central place in social economy research (ibid). Having been coined by French cooperatives, mutualist and associative movements in the 1970s, the term “social economy” for about the last century consists of three main legal and institutions: cooperative enterprises, mutual aid societies and organizations whose legal status fall under the generic categorization “associations”. Under this definitional constraint, it could be hard to argue that the Guldsmeden Hotel is a social economy organization as it obviously does not fit into any of the three institutional categories listed above even though it does have somewhat of a social angle to their endeavours. It is however worth to notice that though this approach originated from France, this approach could serve as a guideline for similar social economy categorizations worldwide. However, this approach is limited as it is one sided and does not talk about the governance structure, the participatory nature and social economy organization’s relations to present day economics and