Paper on social entrepreneurship and sustainable rural development in Croatia published

A paper by Sanja Maleković, Sanja Tišma and Ivana Keser, entitled Empirical Insights into the Role of Social Entrepreneurship in Sustainable Rural Development: Evidence from Croatian Agriculture, has been published in E4E – Education for Entrepreneurship / Obrazovanje za poduzetništvo, Vol. 16 No. 1 (2026).
The paper examines the role of social entrepreneurship in sustainable rural development, with a particular focus on the agricultural sector in Croatia. It analyses the contribution of civil society organisations, cooperatives and other social entrepreneurship actors to the generation of positive and sustainable social and economic impacts in rural areas.
Drawing on desk research and focus group findings, the paper highlights the relevance of community-led local development and bottom-up approaches in addressing social and economic challenges at the local and regional levels. These approaches are discussed in relation to the limitations of conventional public support measures for rural and regional development.
>Particular attention is devoted to actors who, while operating within a market-oriented framework, are primarily guided by the objective of improving quality of life, supporting hard-to-employ and vulnerable groups, and contributing to broader socio-economic development.
The paper contributes to the academic and policy-oriented understanding of the potential of social entrepreneurship in agriculture and rural development, as well as its role in advancing more inclusive and sustainable development models in Croatia.