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Automated assembly is moving to smaller and more flexible systems and components, offering greater ability for redeployment and adaptability to device assembly as small as micro electromechanical systems.

Introduction – Community media was created as an alternative to the ever-globalising and rapidly monopolised media industry. This media is a unity that does not seek profit, voices the demands and problems of the community it serves, seeks the benefit of the public, and its creators are members of the community. It is seen as a tool for the development of democracy and pluralism, and to increase social impact. The sustainability of this tool has emerged as a debated topic in recent years. Community media can both serve as a tool for sustainable development and can be defined as a part of sustainable communication. The sustainability of community media is all about making the presence of the communicative tools of the community permanent and sustainable, or to insure the continuation of the community’s channels of communication as a part of a specific strategy.

Purpose – In this chapter, the author will discuss the concepts of community media, sustainability and female-oriented non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and then attempt to explain the media usage habits and the factors that affect the sustainability of the preferred channels of the female-oriented NGOs in İzmir.

Methodology – The study has been designed using a case study design based on qualitative research methods. Data have been collected via document analysis and in-depth face-to-face interviews. The data acquired were analysed descriptively.

Findings – Findings from the study show that the financial, content production-related, technical, and legal factors affect the sustainability of community media.

The American National Red Cross is in many ways the iconic symbol for disaster response and recovery. The organization, founded in 1881, has a long track record for coming to the aid of those in need in the wake of wars, natural disasters, and other crises. However, in the wake of recent disasters, the Red Cross has been criticized for underperforming. By combining the literature on bureaucracy in Austrian economics and the literature on monocentricity in the work of Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom, we provide an analysis of the Red Cross that helps explain the organization’s evolution over time and that also yields implications for disaster management more broadly. Specifically, the Red Cross is a bureaucracy that has become increasingly centralized and rigid as it has become further enmeshed with governmental responsibilities.

Purpose: The concept of sustainability in the livelihood of rural people is the central point for the discussion for policymakers. Different policies for poverty reduction, developing economies, and environment management are not capable of using multimedia technology for rural entrepreneurial development.

Need of the Study: The study analyses the impact of multi-media and tries to understand its significance for rural enterprises to contribute to developing entrepreneurship in rural areas to minimise poverty.

Methodology: This research analysed a framework that highlights that multi-media technology offers different ways to earn a sustainable livelihood by enhancing the range of advanced technology, access to information assets, increased social networks, information transfer system, and modernisation of traditional working. A total of 450 rural entrepreneurs were contacted to collect the data from 6 different divisions of Haryana through a questionnaire on 5-point scale. A purposive sampling technique was used for primary data collection.

Findings: The multi-media technology influences rural entrepreneurial development through certain organisational factors, new products and services, improved customer service, generation of employment opportunities over time, increased loyalty, and novel combination of resources within the specific context.

Practical Implications: The study concludes the capabilities may be utilised up to maximum advantages that increase with the use of multi-media technology in the rural framework.

The purpose of this chapter is to determine the optimal path of development of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian countries by performing a scenario analysis of the development of social entrepreneurship and analyzing the opinions of interested parties regarding the outcome of social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian states. The authors’ recommendations for the practical implementation of the optimal path of social entrepreneurship development are described.

The scenario analysis of statistical data showed that the existing practice of standardization of social companies’ activities hinders their executing their functions on raising the quality of life. With the expansion of freedom of social entrepreneurship, the population’s quality of life grows; on the contrary, the increase of state regulation leads to its reduction. The findings show that social entrepreneurship in Russia and Central Asian countries is interested in private investments and social companies’ employees. That is why the representatives of these categories of concerned parties support de-regulation. Consumers of social goods and services are interested in obtaining them freely and thus prefer standardization.

This chapter presents a new direction of social entrepreneurship analysis – by determining the correlation between economic freedom and quality of life. This opens an opportunity for thorough social entrepreneurship research based on authentic and objective quantitative (statistical) data. The obtained conclusions and offered recommendations allow using the mechanism of public–private entrepreneurship for turning social entrepreneurship into something more valuable and useful – a tool for increasing the quality of the population’s life.

This study aims to examine the entrepreneurship profiles of migrants and refugees relying on a neo-configurational approach that increases understanding of causal complexity, equifinality and causal asymmetry patterns to high entrepreneurial intentions in the two groups.

Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, the authors analysed 52 respondents – migrants and refugees. The findings show the existence of equifinality in which different configurations can lead to high and low entrepreneurial intentions, underlying that traumatic experiences have a major role in entrepreneurial intention. It also demonstrates that core conditions are associated with refugee’s configurations and causal asymmetry. The cross-sectional character of this research impedes the searching for a better causal relationship. The lack of studies that approach the subject of refugees makes it challenging to develop a robust theory in this sense.

The paper highlights five main configurations – two related to migrants’ profile and three related to refugees’ profile – that enable expanding the current knowledge and practices to better customize practices to increase entrepreneurial intention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research using a configurational approach to explore migrant and refugee entrepreneurship intention profiles.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to determine the impact of technological inequalities on the way of building a socially oriented market digital economy. Also, it considers the problems of social entrepreneurship: the natural essence, as well as the sources and forms of manifestation of conflicts. The main models of social entrepreneurship are identified, as well as the causes of conflicts.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Statistical and regression analyses are used as research methods.

Originality/Value: It is proved that the development features of the digital economy at the present stage largely depend on the degree of technological inequalities of countries.

Social enterprises are becoming more and more important for social inclusion and reduction of poverty. Many countries world-wide have accumulated valuable experience in organization of social entrepreneurship and finding innovative approaches which are also analyzed by academic researchers and discussed on international level. Aim: To identify the specific value segments among consumers of Latvian social enterprise products and services in order to provide practical recommendations for implementation of consumer-focused marketing strategies and more effective communication patterns based on an in-depth understanding of the values within the target audience. Methods: The analysis of previous conducted research and scientific publications, analysis of social enterprise consumer survey results, for survey data analysis are applied analysis of descriptive statistics indicators of central tendency or location – arithmetic mean, mode, median, indicators of variability or dispersion – range, standard deviation, standard error of mean and cluster analysis. Results – The results of this study provided detailed descriptions of the respective segments from the demographic point of view, outlined their shopping behavior, preferences for information channels, which altogether form a comprehensive set of practical recommendations for Latvian social enterprises for more effective communication with consumers as well as for public authorities looking to increase the awareness about social entrepreneurship within Latvian society. Implications: The possible applications of research results for organization of work of social enterprises including application of digital marketing. Originality of This Chapter: Since the academic research has only relatively recently started paying attention to the specific marketing aspects of social entrepreneurship, this innovative study contributes to a persistently growing and valuable body of literature which will serve as a guideline for both social enterprises as well as public authorities seeking to find more effective communication strategies.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of income and geographic diversification on the double bottom line of microfinance institutions (MFIs) in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries where conventional and Islamic MFIs coexist. The idea is to explore whether diversification impacts MFIs' financial performance and outreach differ for Islamic microfinance.

The authors test the effect of diversification and business models of MFIs on their performance and poverty outreach. The authors’ data set is an unbalanced panel sample of 81 (Islamic and conventional) MFIs in MENA countries covering 1999–2018, comprising 743 MFI-year observations.

The authors find that increasing income diversification in microfinance and focusing on rural areas decreases the financial performance of MFIs in MENA countries. Islamic MFIs benefit from income diversification by increasing their financial performance. The results provide evidence of a nonlinear relationship between income diversification and the financial performance of MFIs. Although conventional MFIs improve their depth of outreach by diversifying their income, Islamic MFIs have a lower breadth of outreach because they show a higher degree of income diversification.

This research contributes to the ongoing debate of whether MFIs should focus on or diversify their services to Islamic microfinance. Therefore, the findings of this study are practically crucial for MFIs' stakeholders to understand the contribution of diversification strategies in improving the Islamic MFIs to achieve both financial and social objectives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first research that addresses the impact of diversification strategies in Islamic microfinance. Additionally, using a panel data set of conventional and Islamic MFIs in MENA countries spanning 1999–2018, this study provides empirical evidence on the diversification versus focus issue from the microfinance industry and the subset of Islamic microfinance.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between microfinance institutions (MFIs) governance and performance.

Using a sample of 215 MFIs from six South Asian countries over the period from 2005 to 2009, the authors examine the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) duality, board size, female CEO, urban market coverage, bank regulation and lending type on financial and social performance of MFIs.

The findings provide evidence that, on the one hand, empowered CEO, large board size and individual lending improve the MFI financial performance and, on another hand, bank regulation and serving in the urban market have a significant association with MFIs’ social performance. In an additional analysis, the authors also test this relationship before, during and after the financial crisis of 2007. During crisis period, MFIs’ individual lending reduces the operational cost and bank regulation increases the average loan size in South Asian MFIs.

Those studies that are presented in the literature review conclude their result on the bases of global, European, East African and specific to some countries sample. There is no study presented in the whole literature on South Asian sample, in which all countries really face the problem of poverty.