Guide on promoting cross-border activities for social economy

Social economy entities combine societal goals with an entrepreneurial spirit. They are formed as entities with focus on achieving wider social, environmental or community objectives. Based on these goals and aspirations, the European Commission aims to create a favourable financial, administrative, and legal environment for social economy actors so that they operate on an equal footing with other types of for-profit enterprises. To this end, to pursue access to the Single Market as well as on an international level, social enterprises need appropriate business models that simultaneously serve their mission and vision, support them in their cross-border activities and – where feasible and relevant – help them use technological advancements and digital solutions. The study report, forming the basis of this guide has the objective to identify barriers and challenges related to cross border ambitions of social economy entities. Such barriers might cover different dimensions such as legal, cultural, capacity and business model. However, it should be noted that this study does not provides a comprehensive analysis of specific legal obstacles and features. Secondly the study has the aim to picture existing success stories, potentials and processes related to social economy internationalisation and cross border activities. Third, several types of support services are identified supporting internationalisation of businesses in general as well as social economy specific support

Study on promoting cross-border activities for social economy; description of 52 cases

The current report has been elaborated during the course of the study entitled “Promoting cross-border activities for social economy, including social enterprises” (EASME/COSME/2018/032). The overarching objective of the study has been to study, assess and diffuse transnational social economy initiatives and activities of as well as corresponding European and national policies. In the framework of the study, 52 cases of social economy entities involved in crossborder activities have been selected and interviewed by the partnership.The pool of social economy entities includes initiatives either already engaged in transnational business activities (exporting or importing) or multinational social economy start-ups with international outreach

Regional reports on the evaluation of Responsible Research and Innovation Ecosystems at Regional Scale:D5.3 RRI2SCALE results and impacts

This deliverable has separate subsections for each region. Each region is monitored and evaluated with respect to 1) Regional Dilemmas at the start of the RRI2SCALE project, 2) Embedding Responsibility in Research and Innovation (R&I) activities to address Regional Dilemmas during the RRI2SCALE project, 3) Evaluative discussions with respect to embedding RRI and addressing regional dilemmas based on stakeholder interviews and 4) Conclusions, in terms of the impact of the RRI2SCALE project and its activities, at the end of the project

Multiplex Learning: An Evidence-Based Approach to Design Policy Learning Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa for the SDGs

Although most scholars acknowledged that development is a transnational process, existing discussions usually focus on negative externalities such as pollution, epidemics, violent conflicts and economic crises. This chapter considers a form of positive externality, knowledge spillovers and argues that countries can innovate in policymaking, both design and implementation, and achieve more sustainable forms of development by participating in a multiplex policy learning network. Furthermore, we emphasise that policy knowledge transfer should not be one-way, so global governance becomes a truly inclusive and interactive process. One fundamental problem to this end is the design of such multiplex policy learning networks. This chapter adopts an evidence-based approach to this problem. Using quantitative analysis, we identify performance-based clusters of status leaders, intermediates and followers in sub-saharan africa with respect to the constituents of indicator-based performances on each sustainable development goal (sdg), and offer a detailed contextualisation for multiplex policy learning in sub-saharan africa with a prospective design of an international conference agenda for sdgs

Complexity and Regulatory Intelligence: Meta-Governance of Transformative Laws and Regulations

In this chapter, I argue that globalization of economic activities of multinational companies that have not been in majority owned by multiple nationalities but only employing multinational workforce, attracting multinational corporate board members and financial investors has created regulatory, economic and voluntary challenges for localization of political and economic globalism worldwide. Although national level political, administrative, juridical institutions opened up local national markets through privatization, deregulation, intellectual property rights, and free trade laws, regulations and agreements; the regulatory deficiencies in creating local economic incentives and voluntary initiatives through strategic relational corporate laws, and the foreign ownership of the core productive means, in contradiction, have served a globalized techno-nationalism. Firstly, hit by the financial crisis, the competition among anti-competitive state aid-backed technologies ascended in the world market and caused degeneration in the implementation of competition laws, which is extended to trade laws, and thus foreign policies, hence the discussions for the populist relocation of production, techno-nationally advancing artificial intelligence and big data applications. These incompetent competition and trade laws and regulations for techno-nationalist products and services pave the way for the generic wage stagnation, thickening the gender-based wage differentials, as well as the CO2-embedded trade imports for high income and CO2 embedded exports for middle-income countries in the midst of democracy versus development debates. Laws and regulations are still challenged by a dual political economic risk embedded in offers for localization of supply, demand, distribution and financial solutions. By proposing a network of regulatory intelligence against the rise of populism at city level, techno-nationalist artificial intelligence and big data strategies without humanities knowledge, growing climate catastrophe markets for multinational companies and countries as an outcome of ongoing climate crime, and stiffening gender-based wage gap and basic income debates, this chapter offers a meta-governance framework for network of regulatory intelligence and transformative laws and regulations for sharing financing, data, knowledge, and power within and among cities to create and enable novel economic incentives and voluntary initiatives for self-organization and determination for individuals, connected cities and communities, and global societal political economic sustainability

Circular Economy as a Glocal Business Activity:Mobile Phone Repair in the Netherlands, Poland and China

Repair of mobile phones fits with the vision of a circular economy in an urban context and with the Sustainable Development Goal 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities. Drawing on the literature about firm level competitiveness and closed-loop design through repair, remanufacturing or recycling, we analyze the business ecosystem of independent mobile phone repair shops in the Netherlands, Poland and China as a glocal business activity. The analysis is based on primary data collection through a questionnaire to independent repair shops in the Netherlands (n = 130), Poland (n = 443) and China (n = 175) with response rates of 13%, 12%, 40%, respectively; and 17 interviews in the Netherlands, 40 in Poland, and 70 in China. Findings indicate that to maintain a strong position in the local market and to sustain the trust of customers, independent mobile phone repair shops offer a range of customized services based on direct contact with customers. In China, the increasing prices of spare parts and falling prices of mobile phones constitute the most important challenges, whereas in the Netherlands and Poland, the most important challenges are the competitive pressures from informal repair activities, and new repair shops. Our research also revealed that repairability strongly depends on the global manufacturers’ circularity choices

Circular economy scientific knowledge in the European Union and China: A bibliometric, network and survey analysis (2006-2016)

In this article, we analyse the evolution of circular economy (ce) scientific knowledge in the most productive political geographies in the field, namely the european union (eu) 28 and china by using bibliometric, network and survey analysis. Our objective is to provide a systemic, quantitative, visio-temporal review of the evolution of the ce scientific research field. Using web of science (wos) database and scopus, we trace the bibliometric characteristics of key research terms, their co-occurrences, publication (co)authorships at multi-level (author, institute, city, region, country), issue journals, literature citations and funding sources. Our findings from co-authorship, citation, co-citation, bibliometric coupling, co-occurrence and network analyses indicate that china and the eu have the highest amount of ce literature published and are each other's primary source of co-authorship. Emerging or reiterated main themes in the joint ce literature between eu and china are emergy analysis, indicators; resource efficiency, food waste, zero waste; eco-cities, lifestyle and governance. There appears a good potential for international cooperation in the sectoral fields of automotive, construction and demolition, critical raw materials; in business, (new) business models, product and services platforms, and from security perspective, resource security, security of supply, given the paucity of co-authorship between china and the eu under these themes. In china; beijing, shenyang, dalian, shanghai are the most active cities with a central role of chinese academy of sciences at institution level of analysis. The most active eu institute is the delft university of technology in south holland, the netherlands. In europe, we observe countries citing ce literature yet with no or few publications. Journal of cleaner production is the most important outlet for publications on ce and also for joint publications of ce researchers in both china and eu-28. We conclude our article with future research agendas, and a positive note on existing interests in international cooperation based on our survey participated by highly-cited ce authors