Search results

Purpose: To examine the refugee women's empowerment and integration component of the pilot program of a Turkish social entrepreneurial organization (SEO) specialized in supporting disadvantaged women's empowerment. Methodology/Approach: The chapter utilizes a comparative qualitative case study approach to investigate the interplay between the dimensions of: business model, knowledge acquisition, and learning experiences, the achievement of goals, and scalability in determining social innovations. Findings: Despite the widespread belief that women's cooperative is an ideal business model for inclusivity, the chapter presents a variance in achieving this goal. The results propose that a strong business model, enhanced with knowledge acquisition and learning, and an inclusive approach to innovation, enable a women's cooperative to offer desirable solutions to community needs, improving its chances for higher impact. Research Limitations/Implications: The chapter adds to social entrepreneurship literature by offering multilevel analysis in examining social innovation, which has been often neglected as a research approach in the field. It asserts that an investigation into the community as a unit of analysis promises to be viable research in social innovation studies. Practical Implications: An inclusive approach that develops relations with the broader community and networking with other cooperatives and social actors is essential for women's cooperatives. Social Implications: The SEO's increasing local reach and impact have made it a strong actor in women's empowerment on the ground and force for institutional change. In the long term, SEOs' actions targeting multiple actors of influence will increase the chances of suggested framework changes accepted by policymakers.

Despite recent advances, neither organizational studies nor the scholarship on economic resilience has systematically addressed how the ecologies of organizations that populate local economies can serve as infrastructures for responding proactively to economic shocks. Using county-level data, this study analyzes relationships between the prevalence of organizational alternatives to shareholder value-oriented (SVO) corporations within a particular locality and its unemployment levels during and after the Great Recession. The results support the hypothesis that the presence of such alternative organizations can enhance the capacities of local economies to resist and recover from recession shocks. Cooperative, municipal, and community-based enterprises, research universities, and nonprofits more generally were associated with greater resistance to the recession shock and stronger recoveries – specifically, lower surges in unemployment rates from 2007 to 2010 and greater reductions in unemployment rates from 2010 to 2016. By contrast, SVO corporations were associated with greater surges in unemployment and perhaps weaker recoveries. Providing a proof of concept, this study opens up new lines of inquiry for organizational studies by linking organizational ecologies to the promotion of collective efficacy and a more broadly shared prosperity in economic life.

The purpose of this chapter is to document the use of Participatory Action Research methods as an effective approach for community empowerment and strategies for more inclusive public policy.

The methodology draws on a “participatory video” project with recycling cooperatives in São Paulo, Brazil, and documents the process, benefits, and challenges of using action-oriented methods and tools as an approach to build capacity for political and social change. The authors provide a step-by-step process of facilitating a PV project, its application for policy engagement, and some of the major dilemmas in using PV, including representation, power, and vulnerability.

The research findings conclude that the application of Participatory Action Research as a research method in social entrepreneurship, contributes significantly to build transformative capacity in participating members, in addition to creating new spaces for inclusive policy.

The research is unique in that it points to creative and transformative methods of engagement for inclusive governance, embracing multiple forms of personal identity, knowledge and creative expression in moving toward new solutions for equal opportunities and possibilities for change. Participatory video is argued to be an innovative avenue for the inclusion of multiple voices in these arenas, voices of people otherwise left on the margins. Participatory video is an approach that has the potential to transform the way we (local and global) move toward greater social equity, human compassion, and environmental flourishing.

Among the various global options for self-employment, venturing into the micro-enterprise sector has been recognized as an important way for employment generation and poverty alleviation in many developing/emerging economies. In this context, women-owned businesses at the grassroots play a vital role in developing countries like India far beyond contributing to job creation and economic growth. The informal sector is a sizeable and expanding feature of the contemporary global economy.

However, the informal economy operates at the cusp of the institutional framework, which makes them susceptible to many risks like lack of formal financing options, legal aid or increasing margin through access to formal markets. Non-Profit Development Agencies (NPDAs) have emerged as a viable and essential middle ground support in promoting women entrepreneurship in their capacity to contribute beyond governmental institutions.

The study adopted an inductive qualitative option through a case study design to explore the approaches adopted by NPDAs in promoting micro-entrepreneurship among women at the base of the pyramid (BoP) in the urban informal sector in India. The findings suggest that the NPDAs created an impact through the services, which translated into monetary earnings for the entrepreneurs. They could make financial contributions to their families, which boosted their self-confidence and overall personality. The findings also indicate positive changes like increased self-confidence, self-dependence, and inner strength as reported by the entrepreneurs.

This beginning chapter offers a comprehensive overview of community development, tracing its historical roots and societal implications. It underscores community development’s role in fostering social cohesion and positive change. Beginning with its foundational principles of collective action, participation, and empowerment, the chapter delves into its evolution in response to industrialization and urbanization. It explores diverse scales, contexts, tools, and strategies used in community development and its broader societal impact. The chapter advocates for inclusivity and active engagement of community members, emphasizing tailored solutions that address unique challenges. It acknowledges complexities like ethical dilemmas, power imbalances, and cultural sensitivities, underscoring the importance of integrity and local context understanding in community development.

Senegal’s history since the nineteenth century has favored collective ownership and work, whether state-run cooperatives or community-based organizations (CBOs). This chapter first examines the history of resistance to cooperatives imposed by the French colonial administration and Senegal’s independent state until 1980. The primary separate community organizations were, and are, within daaras: communities based on Islamic spiritual principles. The chapter then explores today’s CBOs, many of which are faith-based, that resist neoliberal approaches to development, again, through community-based principles. CBOs have grown within the space that state control once occupied, and have as much do with indigenous structures and faith-based principles as they do with globally recognized models of development. These foundational philosophies shape the ways people organize themselves, choose their shared goals, and elect their leaders. To discuss contemporary trends in community organization, the chapter uses ethnographic examples from two present-day communities, one a faith-based daara and the other a five-village CBO. This history and contemporary examples show that locally grown organizations resist easy definitions of colonial, state, or neoliberal development, and take control over the ways they organize their communities.

We argue that by conducting systematic research with communities rather than on communities, community-based research (CBR) methods can both advance the study of human interaction and strengthen public understanding and appreciation of social sciences. CBR, among other methods, can also address social scientists’ ethical and social commitments. We recap the history of calls by leading sociologists for rigorous, empirical, community-engaged research. We introduce CBR methods as empirically grounded methods for conducting social research with social actors. We define terms and describe the range of methods that we include in the umbrella term, “community-based research.” After providing exemplars of community-based research, we review CBR’s advantages and challenges. We, next, summarize an intervention that we undertook as members of the Publication Committee of the URBAN Research Network’s Sociology section in which the committee developed and disseminated guidelines for peer review of community-based research. We also share initial responses from journal editors. In the conclusion, we revisit the potential of community-based research and note the consequences of neglecting community-based research traditions.

Building social capital between groups of people and developing social enterprises that integrate social goals into commercial business models are rapidly adopted as innovative poverty relief mechanisms across countries. Together, the translation of social relationships into increased accessibility to resources, and the entrepreneurial dynamics resulting in additional services and goods, are thought to meet the survival and developmental needs of poor families and communities. However, the socio-economic contexts, in which new public policies and initiatives have been taken, vary from country to country. In China, its strong Confucian culture, state-led development strategy, weak civil society, and hierarchical social relationships have contributed to a value structure of social capital, but decreased the efficiency of business practice in social enterprise. This chapter presents a case study of Rural Cooperative Program, a poverty relief initiative in China’s southwest Guizhou Province. With the introduction of China’s new policies in welfare and rural development, this chapter presents evaluation results of whether social enterprises and entrepreneurship can improve poor villagers’ socio-economic wellbeing and promote sustainable development of poor rural villages in China, and to what extent social capital has been mobilized to facilitate the Rural Cooperative Program.

The objective of this study is to make a conceptual analysis of Community-based tourism (CBT). CBT, one of the tourism activities that internalised sustainability, has several common threads with nature-based tourism activities. However, these similarities/common elements must be more understandable between those relevant tourism activities. From this fact, this research aims to assign a theoretical framework for CBT and reveal the differences between CBT activities from other tourism types.

Tourism, unavoidably, is one of the critical sectors that require sustainable usage of resources. Because visiting natural, historical and cultural values/attractions constitute the primary reason for tourists' travel motivations, making those values/attractions sustainable for the future is essential. However, the sustainable usage of those values/attractions can be enabled with protection and maintenance balance. On the other hand, this philosophy will only come true if obtaining the locals support it. Therefore, CBT propounds that local people should make the most of tourism at all levels, especially the economic contribution. Within this context, the importance and necessity of these issues will be manifested in this chapter, presenting a conceptual framework. Additionally, this chapter will support other researchers in constituting the conceptual framework and will guide policymakers and other stakeholders to understand the importance of CBT.