Problemi Ekonomiki (Jan 2014)
Social responsibility of the state and business as a factor of competitiveness and economic growth
Abstract
The role of social factors in economic development of countries and nations cannot be ignored today. However, the goal of this article is not a proof of this already evident fact; the main hypothesis of the article is that the level of social responsibility of the state and business is directly reflected in competitiveness of the national economy and prospects of economic growth. The authors proceed from three quite evident assumptions: first – development of entrepreneurship is the basic factor of competitiveness in the market economy; second – competitiveness is a condition of export oriented economic growth; third – all the above listed “ingredients”, including economic growth, “close” on one key indicator – labour productivity, and the main problem lies in clear identification of the cause-effect relations between them. Thus, labour productivity is the nucleus of the “competitiveness – economic growth” system. The authors consider labour productivity as a function of three arguments: physical, human and social capital. Moreover, the first two arguments are a passive potential of the economic system and characterise the level of development of productive forces and only the social capital, which reflects the level of development of production relations, characterises real possibilities of the economic system with respect to realisation of its passive potential, that is, is the active potential of the system. The production function of social labour, identified in such a way, is, in fact, a characteristic of the social method of production. While studying influence of social factors upon development of entrepreneurship, competitiveness and economic growth, the authors reveal internal contradiction of the existing social method of production.
