The emergence of social enterprises through the initiative of self-organized citizens: an analysis starting from Olson's approach to the logic of collective action

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Degli Antoni
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Browder ◽  
Angela Forgues ◽  
Stella Seyb ◽  
Howard Aldrich

In response to COVID-19 and the shortage of personal protective equipment, the maker community activated local networks in a display of collective action. We conducted a multiple case study of emergent networks to understand how makers self-organized for collective entrepreneurial action while facing resource constraints and legitimacy deficits. Although the maker community has endeavored to break free from institutional constraints, they nonetheless formed relationships with institutions in need. They deployed learned resourcefulness and learned legitimation strategies with varying degrees of effectiveness. Our findings contribute to the literature on resourcefulness, legitimation, and collective action in entrepreneurship processes.


Author(s):  
Christoph Zürcher

In insurgencies, rural communities are the most vulnerable segment of society. Rural communities in Afghanistan are traditionally highly self-organized and capable of collective action. It is therefore reasonable to assume that communities will make collective efforts to minimize the risks of getting harmed. Using qualitative and survey data, this chapter investigates this proposition and shows that three strategies are often used and believed by respondents to be effective: negotiating with armed groups, neutrality, and self-defense. It describes these strategies and highlights the conditions under which they may be more or less effective. It then discusses how external actors can inadvertently reduce the space for such civil actions and make communities less safe, and what can be done to avoid this.


Author(s):  
Armine Ishkanian ◽  
Isabel Shutes

AbstractDrawing on fieldwork in Greece, we examine the politics and practices of autonomous volunteering in the context of the migration crisis. This involves individuals engaging in activities to support migrants through non-registered, self-organized and self-governed groups that work independent from and in some cases, even in opposition to NGOs. We consider autonomous volunteering as a form of collective action and argue that it constitutes an alternative humanitarianism. While recent literature has sought to identify the rise of emergent practices of alternative humanitarianism in Europe, research has often overlooked how autonomous volunteers distinguish themselves from, relate to and collaborate with NGOs and conversely, how NGOs view and engage with them. We found that despite their critiques of NGOs and their determination to work independently, there were instances of cooperation between autonomous volunteers and NGOs. These interactions did not become substantive alliances, as the work of NGOs and autonomous volunteers continued to be disconnected from each other.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (5) ◽  
pp. e2006985118
Author(s):  
Alexander Heyde ◽  
Lijie Guo ◽  
Christian Jost ◽  
Guy Theraulaz ◽  
L. Mahadevan

The termite nest is one of the architectural wonders of the living world, built by the collective action of workers in a colony. Each nest has several characteristic structural motifs that allow for efficient ventilation, cooling, and traversal. We use tomography to quantify the nest architecture of the African termite Apicotermes lamani, consisting of regularly spaced floors connected by scattered linear and helicoidal ramps. To understand how these elaborate structures are built and arranged, we formulate a minimal model for the spatiotemporal evolution of three hydrodynamic fields—mud, termites, and pheromones—linking environmental physics to collective building behavior using simple local rules based on experimental observations. We find that floors and ramps emerge as solutions of the governing equations, with statistics consistent with observations of A. lamani nests. Our study demonstrates how a local self-reinforcing biotectonic scheme is capable of generating an architecture that is simultaneously adaptable and functional, and likely to be relevant for a range of other animal-built structures.


2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 336-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelien van Stekelenburg ◽  
Bert Klandermans

Abstract. “Twitter protests” and “Facebook revolutions” imbue the coverage of contentious politics in news media and academic outlets alike. As long as such protests are not compared to conventional mobilized events it is hard to ascertain the supposed differences between connective and collective action. We report a study that does just that: we examine if it makes a difference whether people are recruited through self-organized rather than organization-centered routes. We surveyed participants and nonparticipants in both actions (N = 319), asking who participated in the respective action, how they were mobilized, and why they participated. Results reveal that in some ways the recruitment route does make a difference, while in others it doesn’t. Recruits of connective action were lower educated, felt politically efficacious, and mainly mobilized via informal (virtual) mobilizing channels, while recruits of collective action were highly educated, politically interested, and mainly mobilized via formal mobilizing channels. Social embeddedness played a crucial role in both campaigns, but more so in self-organized actions: approving networks increase the chances of being asked, influenced, and motivated by significant others, while disapproving milieus decrease the chance of being asked, influenced, and motivated by others. Approving networks thus expand informal mobilization, the more so for self-organized connective action.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-220
Author(s):  
Stefan Partelow

AbstractThis study examines the hypothesis that social capital can be a foundation for community disaster resilience with an analysis of empirical findings from the August 2018 earthquake recovery on Gili Trawangan, Indonesia, a globally known coastal tourism destination. Positive links between community social capital and community disaster resilience are hypothesized, but the extent to which an iterative and interdependent relationship is co-shaping both is less understood. Social capital can enable collective action, providing self-organized social, psychological, financial and material resources following a disaster, that may otherwise need to be provided externally. In turn, disasters create collective action problems where collective response and recovery process are needed, creating an institutional space where the degree of usefulness, meaning and function of social capital can be shaped, recognized and drawn upon, often where external aid is insufficient. These relationships can be observed following disasters, because individuals and communities are often linked through emotive and meaningful sequences of common experiences, actions and activities. Findings descriptively detail Gili Trawangan’s response and recovery process through the events and activities that occurred, and are then theoretically analyzed with a social capital framework including bonding (within group), bridging (between group) and linking (across power and institutional) ties. Three conclusions can be summarized. (1) Community social capital and disaster resilience are iteratively co-shaped through collective experiences, actions and activities. (2) Understanding context is critical for understanding if and to what degree this relationship exists. (3) The mechanism through which social capital enhances resilience is that it can enable collective action that can lead to the provision of needed aid and services.


2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hee Soun Jang ◽  
Richard C. Feiock ◽  
Marina Saitgalina

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Browder ◽  
Angela Forgues ◽  
Stella Seyb ◽  
Howard Aldrich

In response to COVID-19 and the shortage of personal protective equipment, the maker community activated local networks in a display of collective action. We conducted a multiple case study of emergent networks to understand how makers self-organized for collective entrepreneurial action while facing resource constraints and legitimacy deficits. Although the maker community has endeavored to break free from institutional constraints, they nonetheless formed relationships with institutions in need. They deployed learned resourcefulness and learned legitimation strategies with varying degrees of effectiveness. Our findings contribute to the literature on resourcefulness, legitimation, and collective action in entrepreneurship processes.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document