New challenges in the improvement of the citizen participation processes of the urban management. Social innovation challenges

[ES] Las ciudades actuales se enfrentan a multitud de desafíos para poder garantizar su atractivo y la calidad de vida de la ciudadanía. Para ello, es de vital importancia mejorar los procesos de toma de decisiones, incorporando la opinión de la ciudadanía. Por ello, la participación ciudadana, al ser una forma directa de conocer sus necesidades, demandas e ideas, es una herramienta que mejora la gobernanza local y la toma de decisiones. Las ventajas de la incorporación de la opinión ciudadana se acompañan de multitud de dificultades de gestión de los procesos de participación, porque los participantes desconocen las implicaciones económicas, sociales y medioambientales de sus decisiones. La incorporación de nuevas tecnologías a los mecanismos de decisión puede facilitar la incorporación de la opinión ciudadana, porque permite conocer en tiempo real los efectos de los cambios de uso del espacio urbano en distintas variables e indicadores de la calidad de vida. Esta investigación, a través de la incorporación de un software de apoyo en la decisión espacial a varias dinámicas de grupo, analiza el uso de este tipo de herramientas y su efecto en los resultados de esta forma de participación ciudadana.[EN] Cities face a great number of challenges nowadays, in order to guarantee their appeal and quality of life of their citizens. It’s therefore fundamental to improve decision making processes, incorporating public opinion to them. Thus, citizen participation is a tool that clearly improves local governance and the decision-making process, as it allows policy makers to know first-hand their needs, demands and ideas. Nevertheless, the advantages of consulting the public on crucial issues are counterbalanced by many difficulties in managing the participation processes. Mainly due to the fact that participants in these processes, are not often aware of the economic, social and environmental implications of their decisions. The incorporation of new technologies in the decision-making process, can clearly help to overcome these difficulties. A software can display in real time the effect of the changes to the public space, under different variables and quality of life indexes. This research, through the incorporation of a software that helps in the space decision making to various group dynamics, analyses the usage of public participation and its effect

Basque Cooperativism

Cooperative companies form part of the social economy—a third economic sector beyond the private and public spheres that embraces community, voluntary, and nonprofit activities. While corporations distribute their surpluses in relation to the capital contributions of shareholders, cooperatives do so according to activity of their members; in short, in a cooperative, capital is subordinate to work. The cooperative spirit has been an important feature of Basque society, from the traditional auzolan (literally, "neighborhood work") to the development of major cooperative companies like Alfa, Fagor and ultimately Mondragon, the largest cooperative in the world and a major supplier of products and services nationally and internationally. This book focuses on the changes and challenges faced by the social economy in general and Basque cooperatives in particular in light of the crisis of the welfare state, the growth of neoliberal doctrines and greater privatization, and most recently of all, the global financial crisis. The book is divided into three parts: Part 1 analyzes the origins, values, and culture of Basque cooperativism. Part 2 focuses on innovation in and the management system of Basque cooperatives as a source of competitive advantage vis-à-vis traditional corporations. Finally, part 3 addresses the response of Basque cooperatives to globalization in general and the current global financial crisis in particular.This book was published with generous financial support from the Basque Government.Introduction: Baleren Bakaikoa Azurmendi and Eneka Albizu ? 1. The Spirituality of Economics: Historical Roots of Mondragon, 1940-1974 by Fernando Molina ? 2. Culture and Social Representations of Work among Basques: Implications for Organizational Commitment and Cooperative Attitudes by Javier Cerrato Allende ? 3. Developing Intercooperation in the Social Economy: An Analysis of Grant Recipients in the Basque Country by Jon Morandeira Arca, Baleren Bakaikoa Azurmendi, and Victoria de Elizagarate Gutierrez ? 4. Accounting Reform: The Case of Workers' Self-Managed Cooperatives by Miguel Ángel Zubiaurre Artola ? 5. Is Innovation Better Managed by Corporations than Social Economy Companies? A Comparative Study of Innovative Basque Companies by Sara Fernández de Bobadilla Güemez and Eva Velasco Balmaseda ? 6. Innovation in the Basque Country: An Examination of the Cooperative Situation by Antón Borja Alvarez ? 7. Sources of Competitive Advantage in the Mondragon Cooperative Group by Imanol Basterretxea Markaida ? 8. Basque Cooperatives and the Crisis: The Case of Mondragon by Itziar Villafañez Pérez ? 9. Characteristics of Human Resource Management in Basque Cooperatives and Their Response to New International Contexts by Aitziber Lertxundi ? 10. Globalization and Knowledge Management in the Industrial Cooperatives of the Mondragon Corporation by Antxon Mendizábal ? Index ? List of Contributor