How can participatory social network analysis contribute to community-led natural resources management?: a case study from Bua Province, Fiji Islands

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2015Adaptive co-management of natural resources requires a variety of stakeholders across different scales and sectors to communicate and collaborate effectively. Social network theory recognizes that stakeholders interact with each other through networks and that various network characteristics affect the way in which they function. Social relationships can be visualized through network mapping and their patterns systematically analyzed in a process known as social network analysis (SNA). Participatory SNA allows members of the network to be involved in the mapping or analysis process. Participants can then apply their knowledge of these relationships to build, improve, or better utilize their connections to increase desired outcomes. These actions are referred to as network interventions or network weaving. In Bua Province in the Fiji Islands, the Wildlife Conservation Society and other partners are facilitating "ridge to reef" ecosystem-based management planning and are striving to build local capacity for natural resources governance and conservation. This study seeks to determine how participatory SNA might be used as a tool for enhancing community-led natural resources management. First it was necessary to develop methods for conducting participatory SNA research with rural Fijian communities. Network data was then gathered from eight Districts and fifty villages. Social network maps were presented back to community stakeholders for their interpretation and to elicit their ideas for improving their resource governance networks. SNA was used to characterize and map patterns of information exchange and collaboration among stakeholders involved in natural resource management in Bua. Even without complete network data, several patterns emerged. These included: 1) Traditional decision-making networks that were more cohesive than information exchange networks, reflecting the importance of social hierarchies for decision making within rural Fijian communities and the need for resource governance to link into these structures. 2) All the District-level networks had a number of fragmented groups and more ties within than between communities. This highlights the challenge of getting communities to effectively collaborate at the District-level due to issues like distance between villages, conflicts, barriers to communication (e.g. no phone/internet), and clan-based (mataqali) land-ownership system. These issues suggest the need for innovative actions to help bridge these gaps and present an opportunity for network weaving. 3) Actor position analyses (indegree and outdegree) provided a list of opinion leaders and people who are good at reaching out to others. These individuals may be good candidates to receive network weaver trainings. These measures also highlighted individuals and groups that communities would like to work with in the future and who facilitators can help to connect. Overall, these results indicate that SNA can be a valuable tool for better understanding relationships between actors involved in collaborative natural resource management, but its use in rural settings can be limited by the challenges of collecting data in remote villages. The participatory process of evaluating networks with participants was beneficial since it helped communities recognize and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their resource governance networks. This resulted in a list of recommended capacity-building activities (such as alternative livelihoods projects and special trainings for traditional leaders) based on their self-identified needs. However, the real potential benefits of this process will not be realized until the study results are applied, until network weaving and capacity building actually take place, and the process is evaluated to determine if any positive outcomes resulted for communities or conservation. This will require considerable commitment on the part of a network coordinator(s) to impart network concepts, facilitate network weaving activities, and in due course empower a transformation from the status quo to self-organizing, action-oriented conservation networks

Facilitating innovation in FinTech: a review and research agenda

The purpose of this paper is to carry out content analyses on the existing literature to investigate the knowledge state of innovation facilitators adopted to promote financial innovation. In total, 56 papers were analysed using the NVivo software package. Three categories of innovation facilitators emerged from the literature capturing the perspective of regulators, incumbents and new entrants. Each identified instrument is defined and its processes and implications described. Many initiatives were led by regulators, revealing a regulatory strategy change from risk-based to opportunity-based regulation, with regulatory sandboxes being the most commonly adopted instrument. Incumbent-led innovation facilitators were also identified and typically took the form of corporate incubation models, co-working spaces, venture funds and innovation platforms to support financial institutions with partnerships, acquisitions or self-development. Lastly, the literature review revealed innovator-led instruments to support start-ups with raising capital. Based on our results, we discuss several important observations and propose avenues for future research capturing each of the identified perspectives. This paper contributes to incubation research and the financial innovation and FinTech literature streams.publishedVersio

Afterschool Matters, Fall 2016

In this issue: Creating Holistic Partnerships Between School and Afterschool by Kenneth Anthony & Joseph Morra Getting the Right Fit: Designing a Professional Learning Community for Out-of-School Time by Femi Vance, Emily Salvaterra, Jocelyn Atkins Michelsen, and Corey Newhouse Infrastructures to Support Equitable STEM Learning Across Settings by William R. Penuel, Tiffany L. Clark, and Bronwyn Bevan Measuring Program Quality: Evidence of the Scientific Validity of the Assessment of Program Practices Tool by Allison Tracy, Linda Charmaraman, Ineke Ceder, Amanda Richer, and Wendy Surr The Plague of the Broken Crayons and the Heads That Haunted Us by Sara Colehttps://repository.wellesley.edu/afterschoolmatters/1033/thumbnail.jp

Public Engagement and Outreach to Adult Learners

Wilder Research convened listening sessions with practitioners and community members to better understand adult learners' experiences and challenges, and ways Minnesota Office of Higher Education can better engage current and prospective adult learners. This report outlines key findings

Industrial Symbiosis in Norwegian Industrial Clusters : A Qualitative Study of Drivers and Barriers Faced by Norwegian Industrial Clusters when Initiating and Implementing Industrial Symbiosis Practices

We are currently facing a global economy in need of becoming more circular and it is necessary for the industry to be a part of this transition. To accomplish this, the industry needs to engage in cross-industrial collaboration through the exchange of excess resources, also recognized as industrial symbiosis. While international research on industrial symbiosis is extensive, limited studies have been conducted on this topic within a Norwegian context specifically. In this master’s thesis, we will therefore investigate how industrial symbiosis practices can be successfully initiated and implemented in Norwegian industrial clusters. For this thesis, we have chosen an exploratory, qualitative approach to study eleven Norwegian industrial clusters engaging in industrial symbiosis. We have conducted interviews with representatives from the cluster management organizations to gain valuable insight into the perspectives on initiating and implementing industrial symbiosis. The thesis yields several findings, primarily related to four aspects. Firstly, we have identified the main drivers for the initiation of industrial symbiosis, both internal: economic benefits and environmental responsibility, and external: stakeholder pressure on environmental production practices and upcoming international regulations. Secondly, we have identified ten barriers that Norwegian industrial clusters might face in their implementation of industrial symbiosis, related to technical, organizational, social, economic, and institutional dimensions. Subsequently, we found that these barriers might be overcome through seven suggested solutions: fostering pride and community; establishing a shared vision, strategy, and goals; having a third-party to identify and initiate industrial symbiosis; having a third-party to facilitate negotiations; learning about industrial symbiosis by engaging with other clusters; collaborating with other stakeholders; and influencing policymakers. Furthermore, we related these potential solutions to four identified overarching goals, namely: building a collaborative culture, establishing trust, cultivating knowledge of industrial symbiosis, and finding feasible solutions. Finally, we have explored the significance of the key stakeholders of industrial symbiosis activities, which we have identified as significant companies and individuals, cluster facilitators, research institutions, and governmental actors. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to filling the addressed research gap and to serve as a tool for Norwegian clusters that want to initiate or are in the process of implementing industrial symbiosis practices.nhhma

Integration of environmental assessment with planning and policy-making on a regional scale: Towards an environmental governance agenda

Regional environmental assessment sits delicately at the intersection of assessment, land use planning, and policy-making processes. The need for improved integration among these three domains has grown especially keen recently, given the shift in the past decade toward more landscape-wide and strategic forms of environmental assessment. Paradoxically, existing works have failed to engage its complex, multi-institutional dimensions and their implications for sustainable regional environmental governance. This thesis advances work in this area by assessing the state-of-research, evaluating the state of practice, and exploring key environmental governance concepts that could better facilitate cross-domain integration in regional environmental assessment. The research draws on a mixed-method approach that includes three key methods: an in-depth literature review; a web-based survey; and semi-structured interviews. The results are presented in three manuscripts. The first manuscript details the dimensions, conceptual approaches, and a research agenda towards facilitating cross-domain integration in regional environmental assessment. The second manuscript develops a set of evaluative criteria to characterize and gauge the challenges related to cross-domain integration in regional environmental assessment as well as emergent opportunities for learning and multiple domain expertise in practice. The third manuscript reviews lessons learned from a mature regional environmental assessment case study in North America from an environmental governance perspective. Significant findings include that cross-domain integration is a phenomenon limited by institutional, transactional, and disciplinary factors, and that actors in regional environmental assessment need to explicitly recognize these divides in its design. Further, the research indicates that cross-domain integration in regional environmental assessment processes can be better facilitated by adopting an environmental governance perspective that includes strong leadership; alignment of the decision-making scales with the analytical scales; operationalizing the principle of subsidiarity; bridging, bonding, and linking via social capital; and connecting assessments to high-level decision-making contexts within a region. Moving forward, there is a pressing need for explanatory theories to support cross-domain integration in regional environmental assessment, mainstreaming an adaptive context that anticipates uncertainty and failure into the process, and expanding the discourse to a holistic context that takes into consideration the distributional effects of regional environmental impacts on wide-ranging stakeholders, including non-institutional actors such as the local communities and civil society