This paper aims to explain how and to what extent the Korean co-operatives have been successful or limited in terms of various local stakeholders involvement and contribute to meeting new socio-economic needs in local communities.
The paper first provides an overview of the development of multi-stakeholder social enterprises from a global perspective, including a brief portrait of the development of the social economy in the Korean context, especially in regard to the peculiar context of local co-operatives.
The paper also explains the current status of social enterprises and stakeholder participation and their social innovation activities in the selected cities of Wonju, Ansung, and Sungnam which are considered to be relatively successful cases. We conducted qualitative analyses of interviews, including collecting relevant documents such as organizational newsletters and informational pamphlets.
The last section offers an overview of the key findings of this analysis and a set of recommendations for the future development of Korean social enterprises.