Categories
DDPLearning objectives
After completion of the course, students will be able:
• to assess the potential, pitfalls, and risks of non-state organizations in development policy initiatives;
• to identify social problems and mobilise entrepreneurial skills, resources, networks, and institutions to configure strategies to solve the problems, hence promoting locally-led socio-economic development.
Course description
The course sets the level of analysis at the meso level of networks, groups and organisations. It studies development initiatives in which entrepreneurial skills engage personal networks, businesses, hybrid and public agencies, local organisations and international donors, forming institutional fields to improve social and economic conditions. The course integrates approaches of wicked problems as policy problems and organizational and institutional theory with the perspectives of private sector in development, social innovation, and locally led development. It includes tools to shape partnerships among the various organisations.
The course topics include local policy partnerships, social and frugal innovation, solidarity economy, cluster development, sustainable finance and impact investment, informal and substantive economy, commons tourism development, nonprofits and philanthropy, alternative local exchange systems.
Groupwork presentation (15%), interview notes (40%), reflection essay (45%)
Ansell, C. (2000) ‘The Networked Polity: Regional Development in Western Europe’, Governance: An International Journal of Policy and Administration, 13(4): 303–333.
Bocken, N.M.P., Fil, A. and Prabhu, J. (2016) ‘Scaling Up Social Businesses in Developing Markets’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 139: 295–308.
MacKinnon, D., Kempton, L., O’Brien, P., Ormerod, E., Pike, A. and Tomaney, J. (2022) ‘Reframing Urban and Regional ‘Development’ for ‘Left Behind’ Places’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 15(1): 39–56.
Rowe, J.E. (ed.) (2009) Theories of Local Economic Development: Linking Theory to Practice, Farnham: Ashgate.
Swyngedouw, E. (2004) ‘Globalisation or ‘Glocalisation’? Networks, Territories and Rescaling’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17(1): 25–48.
Van Lunenburg, M., Geuijen, K. and Meijer, A. (2020) ‘How and Why Do Social and Sustainable Initiatives Scale? A Systematic Review of the Literature on Social Entrepreneurship and Grassroots Innovation’, Voluntas, 31(5): 1013–1024.
