Community-based tourism and networking: Viscri, Romania

This paper raises questions concerning the complexity of the term “community” when dealing with community-based tourism initiatives. It highlights the difficulty of translating into practice the paradigm of “community-based tourism”. Through a case study of tourism in the multi-ethnic village of Viscri, Romania, the paper discusses the operational role that a network of both internal and external actors may play in piloting tourism initiatives that produce benefits for communities that are unaccustomed to participatory development processes due to various barriers. The study highlights the key role played by a local leader and an external foundation in building a network that, thanks to the bonding and bridging relations activated, led the community towards a form of sustainable tourism development and a broader amelioration of the social conditions. The network described can be replicated in other geographical contexts, provided there is strong local leadership and also international interests and donors. In the long term, however, the network needs to be strengthened by involving other actors, above all local authorities. They are needed to assure the basis for long-term empowerment, participation in decision-making and progressive diversification of economic activities

Exploring the role of networks in reconciling endogenous and exogenous drivers of business development in rural areas

This paper presents an explorative study through focus groups in 9 rural EU regions. It studies the importance of - and relationship between endogenous and exogenous drivers of rural business development. The analysis describes which drivers are perceived important by rural entrepreneurs and rural development experts and classifies them endogenous or exogenous. The findings stress the importance of social networks to anticipate on exogenous drivers. This complies with social capital theory stating that ‘bridging’ relations are more efficient in transferring specific knowledge than ‘bonding’ relations. Eventually, research hypotheses are formulated for better understanding how to reconcile endogenous and exogenous drivers

Bridging, linking, and bonding social capital in collective action: The case of Kalahan Forest Reserve in the Philippines

"This paper seeks to identify the factors which are responsible for successful management of natural resources when communities are given opportunities to manage those resources. Applying the social capital framework, it analyzes empirical data from the well known case of Kalahan Educational Foundation, the Philippines. The study confirms previous findings, which have emphasized the high level of cohesion and traditional norms among a homogeneous community of indigenous peoples (bonding social capital) as a success factor. This study further identifies that for effective management of collective action, mobilization of bridging and linking social capital are equally important as they do not only help mobilize external resources but, at times, also promote bonding social capital." authors' abstractKalahan, People's Organization (PO), Bonding, Bridging, Linking social capital, Governance, Collective action, Environmental risk,

Leveraging Social Networks in Direct Services: Are Foundations Doing All They Can?

· Social networks are critical to physical and mental health, and they shape how people see themselves and their possible futures. · Social networks represent an under-leveraged resource in social services’ efforts to alleviate poverty and other social challenges. · Foundations may be unintentionally creating barriers to practice that leverages social networks by incentivizing individually-focused, highly specific services delivered in standardized, replicable ways. · “Network-oriented” practice can help craft a new way forward that threads the needle between everything-is-different-for-everyone and everything- is-the-same-for-everyone. · By focusing funding on efforts that build and support social networks, foundations can deepen and sustain the impact of their funding

Under the Social Capital Umbrella. Definition and Measurement

In the last two decades social capital has become one of the most analyzed and cited concepts in the social sciences. On the one hand it is a powerful idea, used to explain a very wide set of socioeconomic phenomena. On the other hand social capital is disputed and ambiguous: there are a number of different meanings because of different theoretical frameworks. This conceptual vagueness is reflected in a nebulous empirical application of the idea of social capital. This work critically discusses the most relevant definitions of social capital, exploring how different scholars understand social capital, which are its main dimensions and whether there is a unique latent variable, whether social capital is certainly benign, and what kind of measures should we use to estimate its level.

Bonding, bridging and linking relationships of the CSR target communities of PT Pertamina Refinery Unit II Sungai Pakning

PT Pertamina (Persero) Sungai Pakning Refinery Unit II as one of Indonesia's state-owned oil and gas companies has contributed to the empowerment of communities around its operational areas through the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) scheme. In carrying out CSR programs, the company pays attention to the social relations of the target communities. This study focuses on analyzing the forms of social relations of the CSR target communities and their impacts on the implementation of CSR programs of PT Pertamina (Persero) Refinery Unit II Sungai Pakning. Social relations in this study are defined into three forms of relations, namely bonding, bridging and linking, each of which has different impacts on the social conditions of the beneficiary communities. This research is based on qualitative approach, conducted in three target communities in different areas within Bengkalis Regency, Riau Province, namely Sungai Pakning Village, Sungai Selari Village, and Pangkalan Jambi Village, during the period of 2017-2018. The data were collected through in-depth interviews, observations, and documentations. The study finds various forms of social relations. Bonding relations show that intra-group bonds are important to maintain group cohesiveness. Bridging relations show that ties between groups need to be developed in order to connect each others and work together. While the linking relationships show that there is a good impact for groups that have closer relationships with the higher power institutions. These results indicate that the forms of social relations have important impacts on the implementation of CSR programs and need to be maintained through participatory communication activities in order to create sustainable social relations. This study also finds that good social relations will be strong support to raise community awareness and participation in practicing sustainable environmental management

A System Core Ontology for Capability Emergence Modeling

To properly understand organizational adaptation and innovation, it is critical to understand the emergence phenomenon, i.e., how the capabilities of a system emerge after changes. However, for this, we should be able to explain systems, their structure, behavior, and capabilities. In pursuit of an understanding of the emergence phenomenon and the nature of those new kinds of systems in organizations, we propose a well-founded system core ontology based on the Unified Foundational Ontology. The ontology is also grounded in system science definitions and disposition theories. For a more integrated explanation of emergence, the proposed ontology considers distinct perspectives of a system, such as its composition, structure, properties, and functions. In the end, we discuss the applications and implications of the proposed ontology on the enterprise architecture area and emergence modeling