RISULTATI RICERCA

Companies innovate the value proposition by integrating social and business issues to balance value across multiple actors, thus ensuring the creation of socialbusiness value. Social-business innovation requires that multiple actors come together to align perceptions and expectations and create shared meaning for the development and diffusion of innovation. The debate on the diffusion of social-business innovation is still in its infancy. This paper focuses on the communication practices of social-business innovation, aiming to analyse this participative process through three main issues: 1) the actors to be involved; 2) the goals to be achieved; 3) the actions to be performed. Specifically, we investigate the efforts of B-Corps to address social challenges by adopting a practice-based approach.

This work presents a socio-historical and ethnographical analysis and is based on a comparative research of two Italian case studies marked by a reconstruction in relocation: it is about Vajont (Friuli) and Gibellina (Sicilia). The relocation represents a core issue in a medium-to-long-term perspective, above all if it is connected to the reconstruction of the damaged town. In fact, the socio-spatial and territorial reconstruction produces some relevant effects on the socio-economic structure and also on the symbolic and identity-making auto-representation processes of the communities involved in these phenomena.

In recent years, after confirming that knowledge and training are valuable assets of organizations, different models and strategies that permit professionals to exchange and create knowledge with the aim of improving their abilities and work, are being promoted and established. This article describes two implementation experiences of communities of practice (CoPs) in the Catalan public Administration, pursuing a double aim. On the one hand, identifying in which way CoPs contribute to knowledge acquisition in the professionals involved; and, on the other hand, going into detail about the impact of the knowledge generated on the workplace. Results stem from the application of a 53-item selfadministered questionnaire to 175 participants, 40 in-depth interviews, 2 discussion groups and documentary analysis. Results show that CoPs participants establish a professional proximity by conversing and solving, in a consensus, shared work-related difficulties. CoPs make it easier to work on topics linked to the course of their work practice and learn in an informal way. Also, matters are clarified so that there may be greater exploitation and impact of the knowledge acquired on the workplace.

Research on the institutional foundations of economic development is sharply divided between those who emphasize rule-bound systems of exchange (‘society’), and those who stress the importance of informal or voluntary bonds between individuals or small groups (‘community’). This paper reports an exploratory effort to operationalize the concepts of community and society and test how they impact different types of institutions, across fifty-eight countries. The results are encouraging and suggest several avenues for more refined research. We find that both community and society are important determinants across all institutional domains, and are in many cases mutually reinforcing.

Looking at different European case studies, this section aims to investigate how and why national and local agendas have embedded community entrepreneurship practices in urban development strategies and which outcomes they have experienced. The twofold objective is to question: (1) the policy rationales behind community entrepreneurship agendas, factors and tools that have promoted entrepreneurial initiatives in urban contexts and how these have determined social and economic developments; (2) new theoretical frameworks able to improve the understanding of community engagement practices and outcomes, bridging the knowledge gap on the relationships between entrepreneurship, citizen participation, and possible urban development agendas.

During the last few years, the agro-food sector has undergone a phase of great transformation deriving on arising territorial emphasis on the topic and a greater sensitivity regarding the issues of sustainability on supply chains. In this contribution, we focus on how these transformations increasingly boost new communitybased territorial functions in food distribution and consumption. In answering this question, we attempt to delineate a reflection on tools and conditions for sustainable food place-making through the analysis of two examples: the e-commerce platform ‘L’Alveare che dice sì’ and the covered market of ‘Mercato di Lorenteggio’, recognized as good practices in a perspective of convergence between community entrepreneurship and sustainable food place making.

I modi di lavorare, comunicare, progettare, convivere, fare società stanno cambiando e il riuso di spazi per fare cose nuove insieme ad altri è uno dei teatri di questa trasformazione. A Napoli si può risalire ai primi anni ’90 per trovare progetti e realizzazioni che tematizzavano il fare in comune, riutilizzando spazi, provando a fare innovazione nel lavoro e nei servizi. È utile approfondire l’analisi per cogliere caratteri contestuali significativi desumibili dalle storie dei casi. In città sembra prevalente il tentativo di costruire una nuova concezione dei beni comuni mettendo a disposizione il patrimonio pubblico facendo d’altra parte i conti con opportunità economiche limitate, con le difficoltà di lavorare a lungo insieme e con i limiti delle politiche.

L’articolo compie un attraversamento interdisciplinare dei community hub, a partire dalle esperienze di attivazione sociale degli autori, i quali sono anche antropologi, semiotici e architetti. Viene presentata una analisi plurale che aggancia la teoria dal lato della pratica sul campo, nella quale il gruppo di lavoro, che nel 2016 aveva avviato le prime perlustrazioni sul tema, declina e approfondisce qui i community hub nei loro tratti specifici di ‘disarticolatori’ epistemologici, dispositivi di relazione e centri di produzione. L’obiettivo è quello di formulare alcuni degli esiti della sperimentazione e dell’osservazione dei community hub come elementi di una diversa grammatica del cambiamento urbano.

Questo servizio si propone di presentare, analizzare e discutere il fenomeno dei ‘community hub’ come indice di un possibile cambio di paradigma nei processi di rigenerazione urbana in Italia. Individuati a partire da alcune caratteristiche comuni, i community hub indicano un campo di azione progettuale polisemico ed ‘eterodosso’. Riprendendo gli spunti di un dibattito nazionale avviatosi nel 2016, i contributi qui pubblicati intendono approfondire una prospettiva scientifica interdisciplinare, articolare una geografia di attori e sguardi attivi (professionisti, policy maker, abilitatori, progettisti e pratictioner) e infine riagganciare il tema dei community hub alla costruzione di competenze e politiche di abilitazione di progettualità complesse, oggi espressione di una società civile in forte cambiamento.