THE RESOURCE MOBILIZATION OF COMMUNITY-BASED SOCIAL ENTERPRISES IN TAIWAN

Community organizations are often attached to the government's institutional conditions in Taiwan. However, with the government driving its policies, not only are these community organizations developing rapidly, but they also become more self-aware, striving for resources from different sectors on their own initiative and thereby forming the usual bottom-up exercise from civil society. This paper applies social capital and resource mobilization perspectives to study the present situation and characteristics of community-based social enterprise (CBSE) in Taiwan. According to the findings, the incentives provided by the Taiwanese government are truly an important driving force to promote the development of CBSE. The impact of community organizations is the important mechanism to develop CBSE. By the integration of product and innovation, community organizations are important bases to develop social enterprise. In addition, when developing social enterprises, community organizations must follow local society, humanity or products in order to result in social enterprises with local features. Finally, sales of products of CBSE are based on public trust network of communities. For a community organization to invest in developing businesses, it not only needs the force of a collective action to mobilize resources, but it also needs to form public trust within the community. Finally, the development of CBSE is closely related to the community residents, network relationships and trust as advocated by social capital can become vital strengths to support the development of CBSE, and are also media that must be relied on for CBSE to succeed.