Tag: social capital

Several dozen simple forecasting models for a range of socio-economic indicators were developed for the NUTS 2 region of Mazowieckie voivodeship, the capital province of Poland, with 314 LAU 2 municipalities (gminas) being the basic units of modelling. Given that this set of municipalities encompasses the European-level agglomeration of Warszawa, several subregional centres, smaller towns and a multiplicity of small rural municipalities, the models reflect quite a selection of social, economic and resource situations, including rural areas of varied characteristics. In view of the broad range of the subject matter, the number of indicators modelled (around 70) and the orientation at the basic administrative units, the undertaking is unprecedented. Social and intellectual capital-related aspects were included among those modelled and the paper focuses on these from the methodological and substantive points of view, presenting some of the results and the conclusions drawn from them. We show that construction of such a varied and versatile model system is feasible, that it can be useful for pragmatic purposes, and that individual models of indicators (phenomena) can effectively represent the processes that are of importance at the local scale and, through aggregation, also regionally. In particular, the diverse courses of processes in the ...

In the 2007-2013 European Union programming period, Romania benefi tted from assistance provided through the Human Resources Development Operational Programme, fi nanced by the European Social Fund, to promote social inclusion. Women are, in many instances, a vulnerable group that needs support from various sources for greater integration in the labour market. This integration resides in encouraging entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how support is anticipated by women planning to start a business and assessed by those who already have experience in entrepreneurship. To achieve the research objectives, a study was conducted on a sample of 774 women in three NUTS 2 development regions of Romania in 2013. The variables used in the analysis were grouped using factor analysis in two factors. The results of the primary analysis reveal a greater emphasis on the fi rst factor, represented by institutions, and less importance given to the second factor, represented by family and friends. However, potential female entrepreneurs are characterised by a tendency to overestimate the fi rst factor, as positive on the one hand or rather negative on the other, in terms of starting an entrepreneurial approach. Our results point out the need for a stronger ...

Though policy openings for support from the ‘new rural paradigm’ look promising, market access through sustainability-led economic organisations in fragmented rural areas is not easy. This paper analyses the implications of the interactive embedded governance model framed by the structural, cognitive and relational dimensions of social capital and hence the firms’ ability to engage with networked stakeholders in bottom-up knowledge-sharing for innovation. We show how, in the case of three marginal rural villages in the province of Trentino, Italy, this approach was used to raise stakeholders’ awareness that the local identity and heritage resources represent assets that given appropriate knowledge sharing could be converted into ‘authentic’ tourism products. The study illustrates the critical importance of such non-economic factors for achieving sustainable rural development.