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This paper explores how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion in the context of UK rural communities.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders that operate nationally in government departments, government funded organisations and third sector organisations that provided a policy-level perspective on digital inclusion initiative provision across England, Scotland and Wales. Activity theory (AT) was utilised as a theoretical framework, where a variety of factors–tools, rules, community, division of labour and contradictions–were found to have an influence on digital inclusion initiative provision.

Digital inclusion initiative provision in UK rural communities is organised through the multi-stakeholder involvement of national organisations, and collaboration with intermediary organisations to provide digital skills training and support. The process is fraught with difficulties and contradictions, limited knowledge sharing; reduced or poor-quality connectivity; lack of funding; lack of local resources; assumptions that organisations will indeed collaborate and assumptions that intermediary organisations have staff with the necessary skills and confidence to provide digital skills training and support within the rural context.

This study highlights the benefit of using AT as a lens to develop a nuanced understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion.

This study can inform policy decisions on digital inclusion initiative provision suitable for rural communities.

The contribution of this paper provides new insights into the understanding of how policy-level stakeholders tackle digital inclusion and the provision of digital inclusion initiatives; it builds on the use of AT to help unpick the complexity of digital inclusion initiative provision as a phenomenon; it reveals contradictions in relation to trust, and the need for knowledge sharing mechanisms to span and align different interpretations of digital inclusion across the policy-level; and reveals an extension of AT demonstrated through the “granularity of the subject” which enables the multi-actor involvement of the stakeholders involved in digital inclusion at policy-level to emerge.

This study aims to fulfill the need to explore positive side of work–family interface, especially in emerging economies like India. The authors assessed the relationships of individual (family role salience), organizational (work–family culture) and social (community support) antecedents to work-to-family enrichment. They also examined whether gender moderated the relationship between the three antecedents and work-to-family enrichment.

Data were collected on a questionnaire scale from 487 employees.

It has been found that family role salience, supportive work-family culture and community support were directly related to work-to-family enrichment. Gender did not influence the relationship between work-family culture and work-to-family enrichment. However, relationships between family role salience and work-to-family enrichment, and between community support and work-to-family enrichment, were stronger in case of the male employees. The evolving nature of gender and integration of work-family-community domain provide insights into managers and policymakers about the importance of family and community in the organizations.

The study builds a business case for facilitating a positive work-family culture in India for both male and female employees. The results point to the transitioning socio-cultural scenario of India, which advocates more similarities than differences in modern gender role expectations and identity. The current study emphasizes that while formulating policy, managers and policymakers should keep in mind evolving preferences of both the genders.

The research provides a holistic view of how individual-, organizational- and social-level factors may affect employees’ work–family enrichment in India. It also highlights the changing role of gender. Theoretical and practical limitations are also discussed.

Community health clinics serving the poor and underserved are geographically expanding due to changes in U.S. health care policy. This paper describes the experience of a collaborative alliance of health care providers in a large metropolitan area who develop a conceptual and mathematical decision model to guide decisions on expanding its network of community health clinics.

Community stakeholders participated in a collaborative process that defined constructs they deemed important in guiding decisions on the location of community health clinics. This collaboration also defined key variables within each construct. Scores for variables within each construct were then totaled and weighted into a community-specific optimal space planning equation. This analysis relied entirely on secondary data available from published sources.

The model built from this collaboration revolved around the constructs of demand, sustainability, and competition. It used publicly available data defining variables within each construct to arrive at an optimal location that maximized demand and sustainability and minimized competition.

This is a model that safety net clinic planners and community stakeholders can use to analyze demographic and utilization data to optimize capacity expansion to serve uninsured and Medicaid populations.

Communities can use this innovative model to develop a locally relevant clinic location-planning framework.

Public education is an important institution in any democracy, and the significant resources invested form a critical pillar in its provision. The evidence used to manage said resources is, therefore, an important issue for education leaders and a matter public interest. The purpose of this paper is to consider the role education finance leaders in Ontario, Canada, and what types of evidence they are using, how they are being employed and how much priority is given to each.

The paper employs a review of Ontario’s K-12 education funding policies/reports, and interviews with five K-12 funding model experts/leaders – four business superintendents from school boards of varying sizes (based on enrollment) and one system leader (to introduce perspective from the two levels of governance in resource management) to understand how these experts use evidence to inform resource decision making. This sampling strategy was also grounded in a key assumption: School boards with larger enrollment – and consequently larger budgets – will have greater capacity to use all forms of evidence when managing resources, as the majority of board revenue comes from grants that are mostly based on enrollment.

The findings bring important definition and prioritization of evidence that inform leaders’ resource decision making in education. The results point to two tacit, normative, unacknowledged and, yet, competing evidence frameworks driving resource management. The government is the most influential, prioritizing strategic policy, performance data, fiscal context and professional judgment; values embedded in policy and research were mentioned only in passing, while local anecdotal types of evidence were given less priority. Compounding this challenge is that all sides in debates on school resource needs face issues of access to, transparency in the use of and the prioritization given to various evidence types.

Governments, with the assistance of academics, should formally articulate and make public the evidence framework they use to drive resource decision making. All sides of the resource management debate need to value a wider range of evidence, notably evidence that speak to local concerns, to reduce information gaps and, potentially, improve on the effective delivery of local educational programming. Education finance researchers could help to address access gaps by distilling research on the effective use of resources in a manner that is timely, tailored to the fiscal climate and to system- or district-level readiness for the implementation of a particular initiative.

Resource management driven solely by “facts” can support student achievement outcomes and effective system operation, but alone will not satisfy local-level aspirations for education or inspire public confidence; a key ingredient for the sustainability of this public institution. The results could be used to improve the balance of “decent information” used to inform resource deliberations and establish a shared understanding across stakeholder groups to facilitate compromise. The current state of affairs has all sides in advancing claims for resource needs based on what they understand to be evidence all while portraying competing claims as uninformed, undermining public confidence in education.

The paper draws from interviews with business superintendents and a system-level funding model expert, both lesser studied leaders on this topic in the Canadian context; offers a clear articulation of the evidence frameworks at play and the priority given to each type and how they are being used; presents definition and prioritization of evidence from the perspective of leaders in the Canadian context (most of literature is from the USA) – experts acknowledge that resource knowledge is contextually contingent and insight generated from other contexts will help to advance the field.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the community conservation movement in Oaxaca, a bioculturally diverse state in southern Mexico, with a particular focus on indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCAs) as an emergent designation over the last decade.

A survey of indigenous and mestizo community conserved areas in Oaxaca was conducted in 2009 as part of a broader inventory of the ICCAs of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico.

The survey revealed 126 sites of community conservation in Oaxaca covering 375,457 ha, 14.5 percent more than the 327,977 ha included in nationally decreed Protected Natural Areas in the state. A total of 43 sites are certified community reserves comprising 103,102 ha, or 68.7 percent of the 150,053 ha included in the 137 certified sites recognized nationally. The diversity of Oaxaca's ICCAs, which have emerged creatively in variable cultural, ecological and historical contexts throughout the state, provide an opportunity to assess the effectiveness of community conservation efforts.

Mexico is one of the few countries that have an extensive inventory of ICCAs that could be incorporated into an international registry being formulated by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors associated with loneliness amongst people aged 55 and over living in Coventry, a medium-sized city in the Midlands, UK.

Quantitative community survey of residents, involving postal and online questionnaire and distribution of questionnaire to local community resources used by older people and “ballot boxes” for completed questionnaires in these locations.

Using multivariate regression analysis the study found that living alone, not enjoying life, needing help with personal care and not being in touch with people as often as liked all predicted loneliness.

Survey was commissioned by a range of local statutory and voluntary sector providers and had a wider focus than loneliness. Some evidence of under-representation of males, minority ethnic groups and possibly people from lower socio-economic groups is reported. Further qualitative research is needed to better understand consequences and causes of loneliness.

The study identified factors associated with loneliness that could be used to identify people who may be lonely in general or, for example, NHS or social care service populations.

Loneliness is slowly becoming more recognised as a social problem in its own right and a contributory factor in poor health and well-being. This paper explores a the relationship between lonely and “not lonely” people and a range of factors clustered within the four thematic areas of demographic background, reported health and well-being, access to personal resources and use of community resources of survey participants.

This paper aims to explore the intersection between service and social innovation, using a service-dominant logic (SDL) ecosystem approach to analyze how service innovations cocreate transformative value for individuals and communities.

A case study, with different data sources, is used to understand different innovations in a program that provides financial training to women in poverty in Colombia.

In the program’s service ecosystem, actors worked in tandem to develop dialogical service innovations. These service innovations transformed into social innovations, cocreating transformative value at different levels of the service ecosystem, including beneficiaries, families and communities.

First, this study illustrates how, during service value cocreation experiences, a dialogical innovation path occurs with the simultaneous participation of different service entities. Second, it uses transformative value cocreation to integrate service and social innovations conceptually. Third, it reveals how service innovation cocreates transformative value at different levels of the service ecosystem. Fourth, it shows how technology in its material and immaterial forms, working as an operand and operant role, respectively, facilitates service innovations.

This study illustrates how a wider service focus including all actors involved, in addition to a holistic view of beneficiaries, can prompt service and social innovations.

Service and social innovations have been seen as parallel fields. This study uses SDL to integrate these types of innovation processes and outcomes by applying the concept of transformative value.

Permatourism is a holistic approach to the study and design of equitable tourism development strategies, which leverages adaptive complex systems thinking and permaculture design principles. Permatourism advocates for the symbiosis between the formal and informal sectors of the tourism system, through creating and nurturing meaningful, functional relations among multiple actors. The formal tourism sector must embrace the sociocultural characteristics of the host community and grassroots business development strategies must be pursued to align local microentrepreneurs with expected business opportunities generated by big tourism investments. This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual foundation of this new approach as well as examples illustrating its pertinence to destination stewardship.

Interactions between local people and guests/visitors are the main elements of tourism experience. And local festivals, considered as a significant part of festival tourism, are quite important in this context. Though many studies have been conducted about interaction between local residents and guests tourists, emotional solidarity remains as a concept which has not yet been studied much in tourism literature on local festivals. The aim of this study is to examine emotional solidarity in tourism festival literature and to determine the relationships between perceptions of local people related to social impacts of festivals and emotional solidarity they feel for guests/visitors.

In line with this purpose, a quantitative approach was adopted, and 19th weaving, culture and handicrafts festival held in Buldan was chosen to be studied as it is an important festival for local people dwelling in Buldan, Denizli province located in Aegean Region in Turkey. The study data were obtained through questionnaire method conducted with Buldan residents during the 19th festival (June, 28th–30th, 2019). The sample was determined with random sampling method.

The data were analyzed via factor and regression analyses. As a result of factor analysis, social impacts of the festivals were grouped under 6 factors (under 3 subfactors of social benefits: communal benefits, cultural–educational benefits, social unity benefits; under 3 subfactors of social costs: concerns related to social resources, concerns related to life quality and concerns related to social order).

Local people's perceptions of social impacts of festivals must be determined in order to find their impacts on emotional solidarity, and deficiencies must be remedied. Local governments who organize festivals to invigorate local economies usually try to attract more visitors with the purpose of maximizing economic impacts of festivals, and this is done without placing much importance on the social problems and social change that may arise in the future (Crandall, 1994).

Relationships were determined between emotional solidarity and residents' perceptions towards social and cultural–educational benefits as well as their concerns related to social resources and life quality.