ADAPTIVE STRATEGY FOR THE EFFICIENCY AND SOCIAL FUNCTION OF CHILDREN’S ENTERTAINMENT CENTRES IN WARTIME CONDITIONS

Abstract

The article aims to explore how children’s entertainment centres can ensure market efficiency while fulfilling their social functions. One of those functions should be supporting the social adaptation of internally displaced children in Ukraine. The study's results revealed another issue: this topic is underdeveloped in Ukrainian academic discourse. There is an evident lack of research focused on the market efficiency of children’s entertainment centres. On the other hand, studies addressing the social adaptation of internally displaced children tend to be confined to pedagogical perspectives. According to the limited scholarly attention to this topic, the primary objective of this article is to formulate an adaptive strategy that maintains the market efficiency of children’s entertainment centres in a manner that simultaneously enables the implementation of social support programmes for displaced children. It is argued that the problem should be examined through both commercial and social vectors, as these two dimensions are causally interconnected. The result of our study is the development of a concept of an adaptive strategy that maintains market efficiency by including modern post-war development approaches. It involves a set of managerial tools capable of delivering tangible performance improvements. The study also suggests that this strategy should accept methodological and practical insights from other sectors—particularly from retail—by adapting the experience of designing diverse operational formats according to geographical location, because the conventional model of a large centre may not always be efficient. Furthermore, the commercial efficiency of children’s entertainment centres can significantly enhance their capacity to carry out social functions and organise activities that facilitate the adaptation of displaced children. In practice, the quality of the social component is directly dependent on commercial efficiency, as it enables businesses to initiate more interesting, larger-scale events and educational activities that foster children’s interaction and development. Thus, the article concludes that the commercial success of children’s entertainment centres directly contributes to their social effectiveness, being one of the critical factors in the socialisation and overall development of children in post-war Ukraine.