The aim of the article was to determine the relationship between the occurrence of social pathologies (alcoholism, drug addiction, violence and aggression, poor financial standing, poverty, unemployment and crime) and the sense of security in local communities. The results of the research were put in the context of sustainable development. The article uses the method of diagnostic survey, with surveying as the technique and questionnaire as the tool for collecting empirical data. The survey covered 600 respondents in the following towns: Siedlce, Włocławek, Zamość, Piła, Ostrów Wielkopolski, Zgierz. The data obtained allowed to solve the research problem posed in the article and in an innovative way to demonstrate the relationship between the occurrence of basic social pathologies and their impact on the safety of the local community. The obtained results show that the respondents are aware of the occurrence of individual social pathologies in their local environment, as well as perceive their significant impact on functioning in the local community covered by the survey and have knowledge of the impact of negative phenomena on sustainable development. The article presents the author’s approach to the issue of finding out about social pathologies and indicating their influence on the sense of security in the local community, as well as their importance for sustainable development.
Over the years there has been a phenomenal growth in the number of social enterprises in India. This is partly a consequence of a new policy of the government to gradually withdraw from social development activities. The gap thus created is being filled by social enterprises. A social enterprise can be a for-profit or not-for-profit venture engaged in income-generating activities with an agenda of bringing positive change in the society. While social enterprises are engaged in the development of people, it is rather paradoxical that they experience a variety of problems with respect to the management of human resources within their enterprises. It is common knowledge that social enterprises perennially struggle with various critical human resources issues such as getting employees at low rates of compensation, providing growth opportunities for employees within the organization, retaining talent especially in the middle management, providing clearly defined roles and tasks to employees, leading to high attrition and increasing the cost of acquiring and training new employees. Thus, it becomes critical for social enterprises to think out-of-the-box and try a variety of innovative strategies to overcome these problems. This paper discusses a few such innovative HR strategies adopted by social enterprises to attract and retain talent, such as offering jobs to people with vision and value congruence, enhancing the credibility of the organization through brand building, providing opportunities for personal growth, creating a sense of ownership among employees through participation in decision making, creating sense of ownership among employees by giving equity shares, creating entrepreneurial opportunities within the organization, finding employees from among beneficiaries, attracting employees to serene lifestyle in peaceful and scenic location and providing attractive fringe benefits to the employees. Collectively these strategies seem to suggest that social enterprises adopt a ‘partnership paradigm’ for managing their employees.