Resource enclavity and corporate social responsibility in Sub-Saharan Africa:the case of oil production in Ghana

Why has Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) yielded such disappointing outcomes in oil-rich sub-Saharan Africa? Over the past decades, a sizable body of literature has emerged which draws attention to the shortcomings of oil-related development and complementary CSR exercises in the region. Most critiques on the topic, however, assess specific interventions and/or policies but fail to evaluate the complex decision-making processes, dictated heavily by setting, which produce such actions altogether. This thesis attributes CSR outcomes in oil-rich sub-Saharan Africa to the unique context in which the decisions underpinning actions take place. In doing so, the analysis borrows ideas from a diverse body of literature spanning the international development, accounting, management and political science disciplines. To explore these ideas further, the thesis focuses on the case of Ghana. The most recent “addition” to sub-Saharan Africa’s oil club, Ghana provides a rare glimpse of how decisions underpinning CSR have been identified, evolved and reshaped from the outset. To provide a comprehensive picture of CSR in the sector and its impacts at the local level, interviews and focus groups were conducted with a range of stakeholder groups. As is the case throughout sub-Saharan Africa, in Ghana, oil production occurs in offshore “enclaves”, which are disconnected geographically from local communities. This thesis argues that these dynamics have important implications for CSR. Findings point to companies also being disconnected ideologically from local development needs, which, in part explains the questionable CSR that has become such a contentious issue in the debate on oil and development in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. The enclave-type setting in which oil production occurs appears to have stifled creativity and innovation in the area of CSR. This, along with institutional weaknesses, regulatory deficiencies and the Government of Ghana’s failure to adequately respond to local-level concerns, has produced these outcomes.

Innováció és dinamizmus. Kölcsönhatás a rendszerek és a technikai haladás között = Innovation and dynamism. Reciprocal effect between systems and technical advance

A posztszocialista átalakulással foglalkozó irodalom rendszerint az átmenet politikai, gazdasági és társadalmi oldalával foglalkozik, holott az elmúlt húsz évben fontos változások mentek végbe a technikai haladás terén is. A kapitalizmus egyik fő erénye a dinamizmus, a vállalkozás, az innovációs folyamat erős ösztönzése. Valamennyi (polgári célokra használt) forradalmian új terméket a kapitalista rendszer hozta létre, a szocialista rendszer legfeljebb katonai rendeltetésű új termékekkel tudott előállni. A cikk azt elemzi, hogy mennyiben magyarázható ez a mélyreható különbség a két rendszer veleszületett hajlamaival, alapvető tulajdonságaival. Az új termékek térhódítása (köztük a számítógép, a mobiltelefon, az internet, az információs-kommunikációs szféra radikális átalakulása) megváltoztatta az emberek mindennapi életét. Miközben sokan mindezt kedvező változásként élik meg, nem vesznek tudomást a kapitalista rendszer és a gyors technikai haladás közötti okozati összefüggésről. A kapitalizmusnak e fontos erényét a mikroökonómia szokványos oktatása sem világítja meg a diákok számára, és nem kap kellő hangsúlyt a vezető politikusok megnyilvánulásaiban sem. _________________ Literature on post-socialist transformation usually deals with the political, economic and social sides of it, although there have also been important changes in the field of technical advance in the last twenty years. One of capitalisms main virtues is the strong incentive it gives to dynamism, enterprise and the innovation process. Every revolutionary new prodŹuct (for civilian use) has been brought about by the capitalist system. The socialist system was capable at most of developing new military products. The article analyses how far this radical difference can be explained by the innate tendencies and basis attributes of the two systems. Our daily lives have been transformed by these new products (for instance, the sphere of information and communications by the computer, the mobile phone and the internet). While many people see all these as favourable changes, fewer discern the causal relation between the capitalist system and rapid technical progress. Yet the usual syllabus of microeconomics does not enlighten students on this important virtue of capitalism, which is not adequately emphasized in the statements of leading politicians either.

Innovációs láncok falun. Két falusi esettanulmány a gazdasági újítások terjedéséről (Rural innovation chains. Two examples for diffusion of rural innovations)

Megközelítésemben az "innovációs lánc" olyan társadalmi kapcsolathálót jelent, ahol a kapcsolat tartalma egy gazdasági újítás átadása. Dolgozatom fõ kérdése az, hogy egy településen kialakult társadalmi hálózat szerkezete hogyan befolyásolja az innovációk átvételének útját és terjedési sebességét. __________ A chain of innovation is a social network, defined by offering or adopting an economic innovation. The main hypothesis is that the diffusion of rural innovations and the changes of life-style of the peasants (generally: the growth of market economy) do not necessarily restructure or destroy local networks, but in some cases they will be reinforceed.

Open innovation in the performing arts. Examples from contemporary dance and theatre production

Scholarship on open innovation examines the different shades of opening up the innovation process of firms, where the most important feature is sourcing in knowledge. In this paper I examine the implications of adapting open innovation frames to a field where it was not investigated before: performing arts (contemporary dance and theatre). I draw on case studies and demonstrate that open innovation strategies are viable for artistic production. Independent companies purposefully mining out external knowledge in production, and commercializing on the spillovers of their body of knowledge, put themselves on the shelf of firms adopting and adapting to open innovation.

Tradition, innovation and reform in local development. Conference proceedings

Understanding Local Development as the interaction of a complex mosaic of measures, resources and actors requires having an interdisciplinary perspective.‘Local’ means small-scale, focused, and within reach - one would suggest -, while comparing or understanding inter-regional dynamics (putting what we mean by ‘locality’ on the global map) is what brings into sight traits, which can be treated as universal, typical or individual. The sections of the conference tackled this kaleidoscope of themes that has evolved around tradition, innovation and reform, with roots in both academia and policy-making connected to entrepreneurship, governance, economic and social structure, the labor market and human capital.

Políticas públicas, desenvolvimento local e participação social nas instâncias de governança associadas ao turismo no Rio Grande do Norte

In contemporary dynamics, a change is observed in the institutional structure of the state, culminating in several policies for the tourist sector which promote a new management format. The from this view, the Tourism Regionalization Macro Program (TRP), considered a significant program to Ministry of Tourism, arose as an answer to this new reality, having as strategy a joint working of structuring and promotion turned at decentralization of actions, valuing the residents participation in the search of the permanent dialogue between peers and revaluation of places and territories, based in the regionalization process. Based on this bias, this study aims to examine the role of the Tourism State Council of Rio Grande do Norte, with regard to the tourism planning, trying to understand it and solve it as governance Instance, through the Tourism Regionalization Program interventions, given the participation context of its actors and agents. For purposes of this study is delimited as time frame the year 2007 at 2014, understanding that it was this time, there was greater council members accession, as well as different types of sectors representation of civil society, as a result of a tourism public policy based on principles of innovation and participation. In relation to the research problem, this study is conceptualized as a qualitative and the chosen method is the materialist dialectic. Still on the methodological options, utilize the Content Analysis. The results show that the institutionalization of governance instance as the Conetur does not contributes, ideally, in the planning and management process of participatory and integrated tourist activity, facing a fair direction of your space production. The research indicates that there are debates, discussions and guidelines (still in a timely and targeted form), but not reverberates practical effects, by act in a conjuncture that Is strategically designed for political and economic power game, setting the hegemonic actors performance, which uses this arena to instill personal desires and wishes, that are decided in absentia to the council.

Taking risks in the face of uncertainty:an exploratory analysis of green innovation

The relationship between uncertainty and firms’ risk-taking behaviour has been a focus of investigation since early discussion of the nature of enterprise activity. Here, we focus on how firms’ perceptions of environmental uncertainty and their perceptions of the risks involved impact on their willingness to undertake green innovation. Analysis is based on a cross-sectional survey of UK food companies undertaken in 2008. The results reinforce the relationship between perceived environmental uncertainty and perceived innovation risk and emphasise the importance of macro-uncertainty in shaping firms’ willingness to undertake green innovation. The perceived (market-related) riskiness of innovation also positively influences the probability of innovating, suggesting either a proactive approach to stimulating market disruption or an opportunistic approach to innovation leadership.

Global Mental Health: Five Areas for Value-Driven Training Innovation.

OBJECTIVE: In the field of global mental health, there is a need for identifying core values and competencies to guide training programs in professional practice as well as in academia. This paper presents the results of interdisciplinary discussions fostered during an annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture to develop recommendations for value-driven innovation in global mental health training. METHODS: Participants (n = 48), who registered for a dedicated workshop on global mental health training advertised in conference proceedings, included both established faculty and current students engaged in learning, practice, and research. They proffered recommendations in five areas of training curriculum: values, competencies, training experiences, resources, and evaluation. RESULTS: Priority values included humility, ethical awareness of power differentials, collaborative action, and "deep accountability" when working in low-resource settings in low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries. Competencies included flexibility and tolerating ambiguity when working across diverse settings, the ability to systematically evaluate personal biases, historical and linguistic proficiency, and evaluation skills across a range of stakeholders. Training experiences included didactics, language training, self-awareness, and supervision in immersive activities related to professional or academic work. Resources included connections with diverse faculty such as social scientists and mentors in addition to medical practitioners, institutional commitment through protected time and funding, and sustainable collaborations with partners in low resource settings. Finally, evaluation skills built upon community-based participatory methods, 360-degree feedback from partners in low-resource settings, and observed structured clinical evaluations (OSCEs) with people of different cultural backgrounds. CONCLUSIONS: Global mental health training, as envisioned in this workshop, exemplifies an ethos of working through power differentials across clinical, professional, and social contexts in order to form longstanding collaborations. If incorporated into the ACGME/ABPN Psychiatry Milestone Project, such recommendations will improve training gained through international experiences as well as the everyday training of mental health professionals, global health practitioners, and social scientists.

Latent Space and Social Psychological Models of Diffusion

The problem of social diffusion has animated sociological thinking on topics ranging from the spread of an idea, an innovation or a disease, to the foundations of collective behavior and political polarization. While network diffusion has been a productive metaphor, the reality of diffusion processes is often muddier. Ideas and innovations diffuse differently from diseases, but, with a few exceptions, the diffusion of ideas and innovations has been modeled under the same assumptions as the diffusion of disease. In this dissertation, I develop two new diffusion models for "socially meaningful" contagions that address two of the most significant problems with current diffusion models: (1) that contagions can only spread along observed ties, and (2) that contagions do not change as they spread between people. I augment insights from these statistical and simulation models with an analysis of an empirical case of diffusion - the use of enterprise collaboration software in a large technology company. I focus the empirical study on when people abandon innovations, a crucial, and understudied aspect of the diffusion of innovations. Using timestamped posts, I analyze when people abandon software to a high degree of detail.

To address the first problem, I suggest a latent space diffusion model. Rather than treating ties as stable conduits for information, the latent space diffusion model treats ties as random draws from an underlying social space, and simulates diffusion over the social space. Theoretically, the social space model integrates both actor ties and attributes simultaneously in a single social plane, while incorporating schemas into diffusion processes gives an explicit form to the reciprocal influences that cognition and social environment have on each other. Practically, the latent space diffusion model produces statistically consistent diffusion estimates where using the network alone does not, and the diffusion with schemas model shows that introducing some cognitive processing into diffusion processes changes the rate and ultimate distribution of the spreading information. To address the second problem, I suggest a diffusion model with schemas. Rather than treating information as though it is spread without changes, the schema diffusion model allows people to modify information they receive to fit an underlying mental model of the information before they pass the information to others. Combining the latent space models with a schema notion for actors improves our models for social diffusion both theoretically and practically.

The empirical case study focuses on how the changing value of an innovation, introduced by the innovations' network externalities, influences when people abandon the innovation. In it, I find that people are least likely to abandon an innovation when other people in their neighborhood currently use the software as well. The effect is particularly pronounced for supervisors' current use and number of supervisory team members who currently use the software. This case study not only points to an important process in the diffusion of innovation, but also suggests a new approach -- computerized collaboration systems -- to collecting and analyzing data on organizational processes.

Eco-innovation – does additional engagement lead to additional rewards?

Purpose: Eco-innovation is any form of product, process or organisational innovation that contributes towards sustainable development. Firms can eco-innovate in a variety of ways. The purpose of this paper is to identify nine different eco-innovation activities – including such items as reducing material use per unit of output, reducing energy use per unit of output, reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) “footprint” – and the authors ask whether these act as substitutes or complements to one another. Design/methodology/approach: Eco-innovation is any form of product, process or organisational innovation that contributes towards sustainable development. Firms can eco-innovate in a variety of ways. In this paper the authors identify nine different eco-innovation activities – including such items as reducing material use per unit of output, reducing energy use per unit of output, reducing CO2 “footprint” – and the authors ask whether these act as substitutes or complements to one another. Findings: Introducing only one eco-innovation activity has little payoff (in terms of turnover per worker) with only those firms who reduce their CO2 “footprint” having higher levels of turnover per worker. When introducing more than one eco-innovation activity the authors find that certain eco-innovation activities complement one another (e.g. reducing material use within the firm at the same time as improving the ability to recycle the product after use) others act as substitutes (e.g. reducing material use within the firm at the same time as recycling waste, water or materials within the firm). Practical implications: The results suggest that firms can maximise their productive capacity by considering specific combinations of eco-innovation. This suggests that firms should plan to introduce eco-innovation which act as complements, thereby, boosting productivity. It also suggests that eco-innovation stimuli, introduced by policy makers, should be targeted at complementary eco-innovations. Originality/value: The paper analyses whether eco-innovations act as complements or substitutes. While a number of studies have analysed the importance of eco-innovation for firm performance, few have assessed the extent to which diverse types of eco-innovation interact with each other to complement or substitute for one another.

Institutions, Innovation, and Grassroots Change: Alternatives to Transnational Governance in the Global South

Transnational governance has been advanced as a viable option for regulating commodities produced in emerging economies—where incapable or unwilling states may undersupply institutions requisite for overseeing supply chains consistent with the quality, safety, environmental, or social standards demanded by the global marketplace. Producers from these jurisdictions, otherwise left with few venues for securing market access and price premiums, ostensibly benefit from whatever pathways transnational actors offer to minimize barriers to entry—including voluntary certification for compliance with a panoply of public and private rules, such as those promulgated by NGOs like the Fair Trade Federation or multinational retailers like Wal-Mart. Yet, such transnational “sustainability” governance may neither be effective nor desirable. Regulatory schemes, like third-party certification, often privilege the interests of primary architects and beneficiaries—private business associations, governments, NGOs, and consumers in the global North—over regulatory targets—producers in the global South. Rather than engaging with the international marketplace via imported and externally-driven schemes, some producer groups are instead challenging existing rules and innovating homegrown institutions. These alternatives to commercialization adopt some institutional characteristics of their transnational counterparts yet deliver benefits in a manner more aligned with the needs of producers. Drawing on original empirical cases from Nicaragua and Mexico, this dissertation examines the role of domestic institutional alternatives to transnational governance in enhancing market access, environmental quality and rural livelihoods within producer communities. Unlike the more technocratic and expert-driven approaches characteristic of mainstream governance efforts, these local regulatory institutions build upon the social capital, indigenous identity, “ancestral” knowledge, and human assets of producer communities as new sources of power and legitimacy in governing agricultural commodities.

Facilitating Inclusion: Austrian Wisdom Councils as Democratic Innovation between Consensus and Diversity

Democratic innovations face the challenge of realizing deliberative democratic ideals in the context of structural inequality. Consensus decision making and expertise have been said to have exclusive effects on marginalized groups like women and ethnic and sexual minorities, which obstructs diversity. Wisdom Councils as practiced in Austria attempt to counter inequalities by including marginalized groups through the moderation technique dynamic facilitation. Exploratory participatory observations and interviews with a moderator and the participants of two Wisdom Councils in Austria provide a deeper understanding of the inclusive processes at work in Wisdom Councils facilitating a productive combination of consensus and diversity.

Good practices in the Enred@te Pilot Project: a digital social network for older adults and Spanish Red Cross volunteers

The Enred@te initiative, created by Red Cross, the Vodafone Foundation and the TECSOS Foundation, emerged as an evolution of a previous project that developed and piloted a video-communication solution with older adults, using a system installed in their own televisions. Following the success of this first initiative, it was decided to advance toward a more flexible, robust, easy-to-use and high-quality solution, producing a social network accessible through tablets. Older adults can use the network to video-communicate with other older adults and stay informed on various topics of interest. Additionally, a new innovation incorporates the participation of virtual volunteers, a part of the network that promotes its use in an inclusive and participative manner. This solution was also piloted in 2014 with positive results and work to turn it into a service that can reach older adults through the Red Cross is currently on-going.

Ecuadorian migration and family strategies of social mobility: dialectic relation between emotional and financial capital

This text deals with transnational strategies of social mobility in Ecuadorian migrant households in Spain. We apply the capital accumulation model (Moser, 2009) for this purpose. The main target of this article is, beyond thinking in terms of capital stock and accumulation, the analysis in depth of the dynamics of the different types of capital, that is to say, how they interact with each other in the framework of the social mobility strategies of the migrants and their families. We are bringing into light the way some households adopt investing decisions in capitals that don't translate into any addition or earnings in all cases, on the contrary, concentrating all their efforts on the accumulation of a certain asset they may, in some cases, lead to a loss of another. We will concentrate our analysis primarily on the dynamics between the physical and financial capital and the social and emotional capital, showing the tensions produced between these two types of assets. At the same time, we will highlight how migrants negotiate their family strategies of social mobility in the transnational area. Our study is based in empirical material obtained from qualitative fieldwork (in-depth interviews) with families of migrants in the urban district of Turubamba Bajo -(south of Quito) and in Madrid. A series of households were selected where interviews were carried out in the country of origin as well as in the context of immigration, with different family members, analysing the transnational social and economic strategies of families of migrant members. Family members of migrants established in Spain were interviewed in Quito, as well as key informants in the district (school teachers, nursery members of the staff, etc.). The research was framed within the projects "Impact of migration on the development: gender and transnationalism", Ministry of Science and Innovation (SEJ2007/63179) (Laura Oso, dir. 2007-2010),"Gender, transnationalism and intergenerational strategies of social mobility", Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2011/26210) (Laura Oso, dir. 201-1-2015) and “Gender, Crossed Mobilities and Transnational Dynamics”, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2015-67164).

D3.3 – First Social Gamification Assets

This deliverable is software, as such this document is abridged to be as succinct as possible, the extended descriptions and detailed documentation for the software are online. The document consists of two parts, part one describes the first bundle of social gamification assets developed in WP3, part two presents mock-ups of the RAGE ecosystem gamification. In addition to the software outline, included in part one is a short market analysis of existing gamification solutions, outline rationale for combining the three social gamification assets into one unified asset, and the branding exercise to make the assets more developer friendly.Online links to the source code, binaries, demo and documentation for the assets are provided. The combined assets offer game developers as well as a wide range of software developers the opportunity to readily enhance existing games or digital platforms with multiplayer gamification functionalities, catering for both competitive and cooperative game dynamics. The solution consist of a flexible client-server solution which can run either as a cloud-based service, serving many games or have specific instances for individual games as necessary.