scholarly journals Soft power in recycling spaces: Exploring spatial impacts of regeneration and youth entrepreneurship in Southern Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 632-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Scaffidi
Keyword(s):  
Community Involvement ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Youth Entrepreneurship ◽  
Spatial Impacts

Throughout the last decades, more and more attention in academics and practice has been given to ‘social’ topics such as community involvement, active citizenship, commoning processes. Considering this trend, it is possible to notice an abuse of these terms, contributing to the ‘social washing’ and feeding the risk of instrumentalisation. Starting from the analysis of the state of the art and comparing two cases, the paper aims to evaluate the outcomes of neglected sites recycling with socially innovative initiatives. At the centre of the debate are social enterprises, non-profit entities whose ambition is to create social benefits and new economic solutions for a better use of local resources over time. Considering this purpose, the research investigated the European scenario of Southern Italy, characterised by demographic transition and youth migration. The research adopted qualitative, quantitative and comparative methods. The two cases analysed and compared are Periferica of Mazara del Vallo and ExFadda of San Vito dei Normanni. Both are the result of local resources reactivation and youth entrepreneurship policies. These creative centres are managed by social enterprises. Their actions and activities affect the places producing social, economic, cultural and spatial impacts. However, behind these initiatives lies the soft power, a power able to shape people perceptions through culture. The research illustrates the process outcomes and evaluates its positive and negative impacts to the site and its surroundings. In conclusion, the research is conceived as a contribution to the body of knowledge and the basis for future researches and practical models for the socially innovative recycling of disused resources in urban–rural context.

Sustainability adoption in project management practices within a social enterprise case

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 346-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satya Shah ◽  
Elmira Naghi Ganji
Keyword(s):  
Project Management ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Sustainable Practices ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Study Results

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present the preliminary findings on the use of sustainable project management practices within social enterprise projects. The research gaps within this field have proposed the authors to address the challenges rising from lack of sustainable infrastructures in social-based projects both within for-profit and non-profit organisations. On the other side, behavioural needs and sustainable awareness of different stakeholders will be examined. Design/methodology/approach Secondary research consists of conducting a literature review clarifying the existing knowledge of the research topic within the body of literature. The stakeholders’ behavioural needs towards acting and implementing sustainable practices led to the adoption of sustainable practices within projects which are managed across profit and non-profit organisations. Findings The lack of sustainable behaviour and its adoption within organisations is also highlighted. The limitation of the research is the importance of integration of sustainable development (SD) within social projects. Such projects were identified as the drivers towards educating the society towards future generations’ sustainability awareness. However, if the adoption of sustainable practices is well established in some sectors (such as construction), literature tends to demonstrate a lack of information regarding other sectors, especially within social enterprises. Originality/value The novelty of the research is to develop an early understanding regarding linkages between sustainable practices and project management programmes within the social projects. The particular focus is given to corporate social responsibility and the comparative analysis has been made among for-profit and non-profit organisations in terms of SD metrics. The study results would be beneficial to the researchers and practitioners exploring within the same field.

The mediating effect of job engagement on the relationship between psychological empowerment and social enterprise sustainability

2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (8) ◽  
pp. 347-355
Author(s):  
Hye- RimPark ◽  
Yen-Yoo You
Keyword(s):  
Human Resources ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Psychological Empowerment ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Job Engagement ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Relationship

Unlike non-profit organizations, social enterprises must be sustainable through profit-making activities in order to pursue social purposes.However, the most important of the poor limited resources is also human resources, and for the efficient use of human resources, empowerment should be given to members. This study proves whether job engagement mediates the effect on sustainability when psychological empowerment is given to employees in social enterprises.

Recounting the Empowerment of Women in Rural Areas of KwaZulu-Natal from Information and Knowledge in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Era

Libri ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenrose Jiyane
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The Body ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Critical Resource

Abstract The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) marks the new, advanced era of development in humankind, and globally countries are in the process of ensuring their citizenry’s readiness. In South Africa, various governmental departments, organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-profit organisations (NPOs) are making efforts, through their plans, talks and actions, to attain this status for all her people, particularly women in rural areas. However, the development of women in the rural areas for empowerment remains a concern in developing countries. Consequently, there is a dire need to ensure the developmental status for women in rural areas in the advent of the 4IR, and this paper seeks to demonstrate that information and knowledge may be instrumental in empowering women in rural areas to strive in the 4IR. Accordingly, information and knowledge are a critical resource contributing to the empowerment of women in rural areas for their development. An exploratory question is raised to determine whether South Africa is ready for Fourth Industrial Revolution. The outcome of this paper will contribute to the body of knowledge advocating the importance of information and knowledge in the empowerment of women in rural areas. Significantly, it will generate insights for policymakers on the important role of information and knowledge for women’s development.

scholarly journals Exploring mobility in Italian Neolithic and Copper Age communities

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Flavio De Angelis ◽  
Maura Pellegrini ◽  
Cristina Martínez-Labarga ◽  
Laura Anzivino ◽  
Gabriele Scorrano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Sedentary Lifestyle ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
The Body ◽  
Copper Age ◽  
Mobility Pattern ◽  
Oxygen And Carbon Isotope ◽  
Northern Areas

AbstractAs a means for investigating human mobility during late the Neolithic to the Copper Age in central and southern Italy, this study presents a novel dataset of enamel oxygen and carbon isotope values (δ18Oca and δ13Cca) from the carbonate fraction of biogenic apatite for one hundred and twenty-six individual teeth coming from two Neolithic and eight Copper Age communities. The measured δ18Oca values suggest a significant role of local sources in the water inputs to the body water, whereas δ13Cca values indicate food resources, principally based on C3 plants. Both δ13Cca and δ18Oca ranges vary substantially when samples are broken down into local populations. Statistically defined thresholds, accounting for intra-site variability, allow the identification of only a few outliers in the eight Copper Age communities, suggesting that sedentary lifestyle rather than extensive mobility characterized the investigated populations. This seems to be also typical of the two studied Neolithic communities. Overall, this research shows that the investigated periods in peninsular Italy differed in mobility pattern from the following Bronze Age communities from more northern areas.

scholarly journals Artificial Rice As an Alternative Functional Food to Support Food Diversification Program

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica Valencia ◽  
Maria Goretti Marianti Purwanto
Keyword(s):  
Functional Food ◽  
Nutritional Value ◽  
Sensory Quality ◽  
Rice Flour ◽  
Paddy Rice ◽  
The Body ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Risk Of Disease ◽  
Nutritional Effects

Functional food is a food that has a beneficial effect to the body beyond its adequate nutritional effects. It can help improve someone’s health and/or decrease the risk of disease. The awareness in the community of the importance of health encourages the development of functional food. One of the functional food that has been developed in Indonesia is the artificial rice. Artificial rice, an alternative paddy rice substitute, has a minimally equal value to paddy rice. Artificial rice is made to reduce people’s dependence on paddy rice and to support food diversification program to achieve food security in Indonesia. Artificial rice is made from a non-paddy rice flour with a certain compositions, so that it can be used as a vehichle to make a functional food and can be fortified with ingredients that contain functional active compounds. Indonesian researchers have developed artificial rice products by utilizing local resources, such as corn, sorghum, spices, tubers, and others, to obtain an artificial rice with improved nutritional and functional characters that have some health benefits such as antidiabetic, antioxidant, antihypertensive, and anticancer. Such development has resulted in the observation that artificial rice can be used as a functional food for rice substitute with an equal or better nutritional value than paddy rice. However, further research is still needed to improve the sensory quality of artificial rice so that it can be accepted easily by the community. Keywords: Artificial rice, food diversification, functional food, rice analogue

scholarly journals house4hack: STIMULATING TECHNICAL AND PRACTICAL INNOVATION FOR SOCIAL GOOD

10.28945/2131 ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 01
Author(s):  
Hossana Twinomurinzi ◽  
Schalk Heunis
Keyword(s):  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Life Strategy ◽  
Technical Equipment ◽  
Social Good ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Working Space ◽  
Innovative Environment ◽  
Seed Funding ◽  
Technical Artifacts ◽  
Artificial Hand

John Burger, the founding member of house4hack, despite his passion for social good using practical innovation, was fully aware of the cost of getting people and organizations actively involved in social enterprises. The successful electrical and electronics engineer with a number of academic (PhD and Masters – cum laude) and corporate accolades (executive in a top firm) had already been at the top of the corporate ladder. But despite the success, his stronger desire to see South Africa become a net producer of IT and technical artifacts rather than a net importer had led him to rethink his entire life strategy. After deep discussions on the merits of free and open source software development with two friends, they decided to start house4hack as a non-profit organization. The main purpose of house4hack was to provide an innovative environment, a hacker space, where members could conceptualise and create innovative technical artifacts which are well suited for the South African and African environment. The emphasis of house4hack was on making available technical equipment and working space so that members had an environment in which they could experiment and develop technical artifacts. An example of a technical artefact that emerged from house4hack is Robohand. Robohand is a mechanically driven artificial hand printed using 3D technology. Robohand has depended exclusively on donations to develop and distribute artificial hands to people who cannot afford them, such as in the war torn areas of South Sudan. It was now three years since house4hack started. The hacker space was exciting, new ideas and opportunities kept emerging at the Tuesday meet ups where members and visitors networked and collaborated on new techniques or technology they had come across. But despite the liveliness, there were some key questions and critical decisions on John’s mind: 1. How do we get more people involved in creating artifacts? 2. Where do we find seed funding to support house4hack? 3. Are we serving Africa well enough with relevant artifacts? 4. Am I falling right back into the corporate work lifestyle trap?

scholarly journals Analysis of the Characteristics of Social Enterprises: The Case of Microfinance Institutions and Non-Profit Organizations Benefiting from Microcredit in Burundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Marie-Goreth Nduwayo ◽  
Michel Sayumwe
Keyword(s):  
Strategic Alignment ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Organizational Efficiency ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Microfinance Institutions ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Income Generating Activities ◽  
Non Profit Organizations

<p><em>The crisis that Burundi has experienced since October 1993 has led to the emergence of new associative mechanisms at the initiative of Burundian citizens around the same adventure: that of microcredit. Far from being a fad, microcredit has been the single source of financing for poor citizens by enabling them to engage in income-generating activities. For this, beneficiaries who are for the most part without material guarantee must not only group themselves in associations, but also align themselves with the constraints of the lessor. According to the theory of contingency, any organization can increase its performance to the extent that its strategy is in harmony with its environment. Our analysis considers the issue of strategic alignment from a new angle. We conclude that the adjustment of the NPOs members to the modalities of granting loans enables them to benefit from Microfinance Institutions which help to reach their main objectives and to promote a real organizational efficiency.</em><em></em></p>

scholarly journals Actors in Social Agriculture Cooperatives Combating Organized Crime in Southern Italy: Cultivating the Ground

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 9257
Author(s):  
Luca Fazzi ◽  
Susanne Elsen
Keyword(s):  
Organized Crime ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Poverty Rate ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Small Organizations ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
High Level

Southern Italy suffers from a high poverty rate, unemployment, emigration flows, and a strong presence of organized crime in the field of agriculture. This study seeks to investigate the potential of social enterprises as driving forces for the legal and eco-social development of fragile Southern Italian areas. To work in such challenging contexts requires the development of a high level of resilience, which implies the ability to adapt to difficulties and to overcome crises by coming out stronger than before. The initiatives we detected in Southern Italy are examples for the strength that can come from ideal motivations. In the case of social agriculture initiatives in Southern Italy counteracting organized crime, these motivations are an indispensable condition for their survival and growth. The accumulation of problems and difficulties, however, risks corroding motivations of the actors. This can lead to the withdrawal of members, which can have a serious impact on these small organizations. Thus, idealism is a necessary condition to face the challenges of legal and social environmental development, but it is not sufficient on its own, except in the short term, to allow social enterprises to emerge from extremely precarious conditions. Idealism can support resilience, but by itself, it cannot create a sustainable change. There is, therefore, the need to invest in these social enterprises, in the training of the actors involved, and in the selection and acquisition of the skills for strengthening the efficiency and sustainability of businesses and to foster horizontal structures of mutuality and solidarity to create a supportive environment for these social enterprises and their mission.

scholarly journals Knowledge management activities in social enterprises: lessons for small and non-profit firms

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 376-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria L. Granados ◽  
Souad Mohamed ◽  
Vlatka Hlupic
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Social Environmental ◽  
The Uk

Purpose This paper aims to explore what social enterprises (SEs) in the UK know and how they acquire, convert, apply and protect this knowledge. This will enable them to manage their knowledge effectively and, hence, improve their practices and maximise the creation of social, environmental and economic value. Design/methodology/approach This study follows a qualitative approach, comprising 21 interviews with founders and senior members of SEs in the UK. Findings The results show that the investigated SEs have knowledge management (KM) practices similar to the already identified in SMEs, associated with informality, reliance on external sources and focus on socialisation activities, but they have unique challenges on managing their knowledge related to their hybrid mission, to include social and economic objectives and their closed relationship with stakeholders. Research limitations/implications As there is limited research on KM practices in SEs; they were defined based on previous studies in large, private and public companies. Therefore, not all practices may be included. This research is a starting point in the study of KM in SEs. Practical implications This study identifies knowledge activities that enable the creation of social, environmental and economic value in SEs. This allows SEs, small firms and non-profit organisations to review their current practices and develop plans for their further improvement. Originality/value This paper is one of the first empirical studies exploring KM practices in SEs, highlighting their informal nature as well as their impact in and on the enterprise.

Geography of Food

Geography ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Passidomo ◽  
Jeffrey Miller
Keyword(s):  
Global Economy ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Rural Sociology ◽  
Alternative Food Systems ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Many ◽  
Agricultural Geography

The geography of food is an emergent and growing subfield within human geography. Often distinguished from older literature in agricultural geography, writings in the geography of food tend to be critical (and in some cases, radical) in their political framing, focusing on the many ways in which food systems are connected to, and potentially disruptive of, entrenched systems of oppression and social and economic inequality. In part, this critical framing arose in response to a lack of critical food systems engagement in other disciplines, and to agricultural geography’s focus on spaces of production; geography’s persistent interest in spatial relationships and systems of power that cross spaces and scales made the discipline well-suited to critical interrogation of food and agricultural systems. Geographers who study and write about food demonstrate interest in scales ranging from the body to the global economy, and indeed the ways in which global processes become inscribed on and metabolized by individual bodies in disparate spaces. Literature in this subdiscipline is often theoretically robust, drawing on complex biopolitical formulations, state theory, and multi-scalar analyses of political economic change to link global processes with local places, and to situate alternative food systems within a dominant industrial agro-food system. The geography of food shares many theoretical and empirical interests with other food studies subdisciplines, including rural sociology and the anthropology of food. This article primarily features contributions by geographers, or by scholars who make use of geographic concepts (often emphasizing scale or place in their analysis). There is also a robust literature in agricultural geography (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article “Agricultural Geography”); this article aims to focus instead on geographies of food “beyond the farm gate.” As such, the article is organized by sections according to scale (global/national/urban/rural/home and body), and then focuses on a variety of food movements and responses to corporate/industrial global food systems.

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