Udderly fantastic online communities : how organisations are using online social networking for community relations and issues management

From empowering consumers and citizens, through to sharing party photographs and organising social events, social networking has transformed the way most people communicate. The Australian dairy industry, wracked by ten years of drought and increasing numbers of activists questioning its environmental and social costs, has established a closed-wall social networking site, called Udderly Fantastic, exclusively for internal stakeholders such as farmers and dairy manufacturers. This case study demonstrates that organisations wanting to engage their stakeholders in an open and transparent way can use social networking as a way of providing information and, importantly, a platform for dialogue in which issues can be raised and discussed.

Social inclusion through cultural engagement among ethnic communities

This study analyzes arts attendance of six ethnic communities in Australia using social inclusion as a theoretical lens. Qualitative data from 20 interviews and 6 focus groups (N = 37) were examined. Respondents were from established (Italian, Greek), moderately established (Chinese, Vietnamese, Indian), and newly settled (African) communities. Four themes were identified that are linked to social inclusion: (a) social connectedness; (b) link with home culture; (c) link with host and other cultures; and (d) inclusive initiatives. All ethnic participants shared views on social connectedness; Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indian participants expressed a strong need to maintain links with their home culture and develop links with the host culture. Italian and Greek respondents focused on developing links with host and other cultures. African respondents wished to maintain home country links. The study advances arts marketing literature and cross-cultural marketing initiatives using a social inclusion lens to explain arts attendance by ethnic communities.

Programs to improve the social and emotional wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities

Attending to the social and emotional wellbeing of those from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural backgrounds is widely recognised to play a key role in effective social work practice. However, relatively little is currently known about what effective practice comprises, and significant challenges exist in any effort to demonstrate that programs do achieve significant change both for individual participants and the communities in which they live. This paper considers one program, Seasons for Healing, to illustrate the type of intervention that holds promise when working with adults and discusses the difficulties that arise in both defining and assessing program outcomes.

Embedded markets, communities, and the invisible hand of social norms

The authors'ethnographic work on social norms is intended to unravel the noninstrumental core of embedded markets. In offering a theory of “the invisible hand of social norms,” the authors show that consumer and seller behavior have expressive, moral, and emotional underpinnings that cannot be understood without a broader conceptualization of human motives and actions. This ethnography provides a rich understanding of the role of community and the behavioral dimensions of markets, which in turn helps deconstruct the current axiomatic treatment of transaction-centric markets and to reconstruct the market as a socially embedded institution in which community ties are formed and sustained.

Relationship of Coca-Cola Brazil and the communities participant of the social projects: (im) possibilities

Five years ago, Coca-Cola Brasil launched a program named “Coletivo Project”, with the purpose to enjoy an opportunity of increase on the potential consumption power of the low-income pyramid population that lived on the “favelas”. At the same time, it had the objective to offer to them a social and financial impact, which is a trust on the future, the first job for the young adults’ participant of this program and an increase on their family source of revenues, through salaries. This was possible because through Coletivo Project, Coca-Cola identified the assets they have through its value chain, focusing on its competencies, such as retail, merchandising and logistics to apply them on courses to teach the young people of the communities and, as a result, form them to be able to find their new jobs. Internal indicators followed in a monthly basis by Coca-Cola demonstrated that the communities that had the presence of Coletivos, in comparison to those without Coletivos, had social and financial impacts. The social was the fact that the young formed started to have more confidence on their future and felt with a higher self-stem to apply for and obtain their first job. On the financial aspect, they were benefit through the increasing of their revenues and also their families and Coca-Cola had an increase on sales, when compared to a community without a Coletivo Project installed. This dissertation seeks to identify the current relationship between Coca-Cola and the communities, through the Coletivo Project classes performed on the NGOs located at this places, in order to identify opportunities for improvement the benefits and the impacts (financial and social) on the NGOs, communities and all stakeholders of this project. This dissertation examines this relationship, through presence interviews performed on four NGOs selected, and located on four of the twenty communities, that are participants of the Coletivo Project on Rio de Janeiro city. These interviews performed with the students, representatives and educators of these NGOs. The covered period of the interviews ranges from April 2014 to August 2014. This dissertation draws on first-hand qualitative empirical evidence gathered through extensive fieldwork. The main findings among possibilities for improvement by Coca-Cola are: • Implement new courses, beyond those existent at Coca-Cola (Retail, Logistics, etc.). • Increase the content of the employment module of Coletivo classes, focusing on improving educational, cultural, economic, political, social and professional life. • Increase the scale, through the quantity of positions on the Retail Coletivo classes. • Develop cultural and sports events with the communities. • Support the points of sales, participant of the practical classes of the Coletivo Retail, with refrigerators and furniture with the Coca-Cola logo. • Provide coffee breaks and meals during the Coletivo classes, using Coca-Cola beverages and partners for food items, developing the nutrition platform of the company and filling a need of the students. • Perform a research with all stakeholders related to this Project, including those students and mothers that are not participant of the Coletivo, in order to listen to them, understand their needs, and offer solutions to fulfill these gaps. and on the side of the • Perform partnerships with educational institutions to make viable other type of courses, more technical, but that have a relation with the core business of Coca-Cola Brasil, such as marketing. • Implement the Coca-Cola University, already existed at the Company. • Create courses or activities focused on the children. Regarding the impossibilities, the findings are: • Improve the basic sanitation of the communities. • Improve the safety on the communities. • Provide a home to those do not have. • Implement courses that have no relationship with Coca-Cola business and expertise, such as gastronomy. However, Coca-Cola can influence stakeholders on that. The results suggest to executives of Coca-Cola that a deep and a qualitative research on the communities of Brazil, in order to listen young people, educators, mothers, partners that offer jobs, from Coletivo and out of the project, is mandatory, to understand their needs, dreams, complains and offer valuable solutions to all.

Impact assessment and quality analysis of corporate social responsability (CSR) programs of mining companies and their contribution to sustainable development in the communities they operate: case study Tenke Fungurume Mining SA in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Purpose – This case study presents an impact assessment of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs of the TFM Company in order to understand how they contribute to the sustainable development of communities in areas in which they operate. Design/Methodology/Approach - Data for this study was collected using qualitative data methods that included semi-structured interviews and Focus Group Discussions most of them audio and video recorded. Documentary analysis and a field visit were also undertaken for the purpose of quality analysis of the CSR programs on the terrain. Data collected was analyzed using the Seven Questions to sustainability (7Qs) framework, an evaluation tool developed by the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) North America chapter. Content analysis method was on the other hand used to examine the interviews and FGDs of the study participants. Findings - Results shows that CSR programs of TFM SA do contribute to community development, as there have been notable changes in the communities’ living conditions. But whether they have contributed to sustainable development is not yet the case as programs that enhance the capacity of communities and other stakeholders to support these projects development beyond the implementation stage and the mines operation lifetime need to be considered and implemented. Originality/Value – In DRC, there is paucity of information of research studies that focus on impact assessment of CSR programs in general and specifically those of mining companies and their contribution to sustainable development of local communities. Many of the available studies cover issues of minerals and conflict or conflict minerals as mostly referred to. This study addressees this gap.

Indexes of social lag in the communities of Mexico: an application

Includes bibliography

When the Practice of Theorizing Meets the Theorizing of Practice. Social Knowledge Making in Organization Science Academia and Managerial Communities

The aim of the present work is to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between organization theory and management practice. It is organized as a collection of two papers, a theoretical and conceptual contribution and an ethnographic study. The first paper is concerned with systematizing different literatures inside and outside the field of organization studies that deal with the theory-practice relation. After identifying a series of positions to the theory-practice debate and unfolding some of their implicit assumptions and limitations, a new position called entwinement is developed in order to overcome status quo through reconciliation and integration. Accordingly, the paper proposes to reconceptualize theory and practice as a circular iterative process of action and cognition, science and common-sense enacted in the real world both by organization scholars and practitioners according to purposes at hand. The second paper is the ethnographic study of an encounter between two groups of expert academics and practitioners occasioned by a one-year executive business master in an international business school. The research articulates a process view of the knowledge exchange between management academics and practitioners in particular and between individuals belonging to different communities of practice, in general, and emphasizes its dynamic, relational and transformative mechanisms. Findings show that when they are given the chance to interact, academics and practitioners set up local provisional relations that enable them to act as change intermediaries vis-a-vis each other’s worlds, without tying themselves irremediably to each other and to the scenarios they conjointly projected during the master’s experience. Finally, the study shows that provisional relations were accompanied by a recursive shift in knowledge modes. While interacting, academics passed from theory to practical theorizing, practitioners passed from an involved practical mode to a reflexive and quasi-theoretical one, and then, as exchanges proceeded, the other way around.

Productive Diversification and Sustainable Use of Complex Social-Ecological Systems: A Comparative Study of Indigenous and Settler Communities in the Bolivian Amazon

Agricultural and forest productive diversification depends on multiple socioeconomic drivers—like knowledge, migration, productive capacity, and market—that shape productive strategies and influence their ecological impacts. Our comparison of indigenous and settlers allows a better understanding of how societies develop different diversification strategies in similar ecological contexts and how the related socioeconomic aspects of diversification are associated with land cover change. Our results suggest that although indigenous people cause less deforestation and diversify more, diversification is not a direct driver of deforestation reduction. A multidimensional approach linking sociocognitive, economic, and ecological patterns of diversification helps explain this contradiction.

Broadening the Scope of Ethnic Identity: A Social Sustainability Solution for Pan African Communities through Ethnically Relevant Educational Programming

This conceptual study explores ethnic identity development theory in order to argue that ethnic identity development education is a means of developing broad senses of community in the African Diaspora that expand beyond a tribal, local, familial level. This study suggests that the broadening of community understanding would contribute to establishing social sustainability on regional, national and international levels within the Pan African community. Establishing such social sustainability would have direct effects on the areas of economic and environmental sustainability. One of the goals of this project is to offer suggestions for ethnically relevant education that can develop social sustainability in several places throughout the Diaspora, such as in Nigeria where ethnic conflicts are a contemporary concern.