A European Perspective on Social Responsibility

Iñigo de Miguel Beriain is a Post-Doctorate Researcher at both the University of Deusto and the University of the Basque Country under the Inter-University Chair in Law and Human Genome. His research relates to the application of social responsibility in a wide range of fields. In my search to put a face on the international social enterprise movement, Beriain helps to contextualize its progress from a European perspective.

In this interview, Beraian discusses what is still needed from the growing social enterprise movement, why charities may actually be detrimental to the changes we are trying to create, and how the European social welfare system is not as conducive to rapid change.

Quote: “Crisis situations are the best situations. You never make changes when things are going well…It has a lot of things to do with the level of poverty in a country. In the United States, people who are poor don’t have a social security system, they don’t have something like a medical pension. In Europe, you have these things even if you are extremely poor. So even in crisis times, your situation will never be desperate in the European Union…It’s much better for us to say, ‘Let’s move nothing. Let’s stay the way we are.’ I think in the U.S. people are saying, ‘What can we do? We’ve got nothing to lose, so let’s run with this.’”

P.S. Sorry about the birds in the background. It was the first spring day in Bilbao and everyone was excited.