This paper theorises how inclusive grassroots innovation responds to socio-economic inequalities and facilitates efforts to overcome them, contingent on solidaristic relationships. As a mainstream policy concept, the term ‘innovation’ has become more narrowly defined as capital-intensive technological innovation, which has often worsened social inequalities. In response, ‘inclusive innovation’ has become an umbrella term encompassing diverse alternatives seeking to reduce or avoid social inequalities. These have arisen especially in the Social Solidarity Economy (SSE), based on democratic self-management and mutual aid; its enterprises depend on wider ecosystems of support groups. The SSE has some overlaps with Alternative Agri-Food Networks (AAFNs), which build greater social proximity between producers and consumers. Hence the overlap is here called the SSE-AAFNs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many SSE-AAFNs rapidly adapted to the disruptions through novel practices that could fulfil their members’ needs. SSE-AAFNs ecosystems played this creative role through three general parameters: inclusive grassroots innovation, agile adaptations, and a transformative resilience bouncing forwards. These parameters form a tripartite framework that helps to analyse case studies of SSE-AAFNs in Brazil and Turkey. In both cases, grassroots innovation helped to overcome social inequalities (of class, race, gender), in ways contingent on each initiative and its context. SSE-AAFNs have demanded and gained support measures from municipalities, along lines helping to build collective capacities rather than dependence. The tripartite analytical framework here has wider relevance to SSE ecosystems developing grassroots innovation which can overcome inequalities.
This research conducts a comparative analysis of the concepts of "autonomous" and "independent" as they relate to national regulatory authorities, with explicit focus on Romanian and French legislation. Given the increasing importance of these authorities in the communications and energy sectors, the analysis begins by examining European legislation that requires their establishment in member states. Through a detailed examination of national legislation, specialised literature, and relevant case law - including decisions from the Court of Justice of the European Union - the study aims to clarify the distinct yet overlapping interpretations of autonomy and independence. The findings will highlight how these concepts affect the effectiveness and accountability of regulatory authorities in different national contexts. The research shows both differences and similarities in the regulatory frameworks of Romania and France, offering insights into how each country manages the complexities of regulatory independence. The analysis concludes with several proposals (lege ferenda) to improve operational collaboration among independent regulatory authorities. These recommendations will emphasise alignment with EU and OECD best practices and provide practical strategies to help countries establish or reform their regulatory bodies. By fostering an understanding of these foundational concepts, this study seeks to make a significant contribution to the discussion on regulatory governance and to support the development of stronger regulatory frameworks across Europe.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
Nicolás Garzón Rodríguez, Janaina Pamplona da Costa
This article analyzes the transfer process of the transformative innovation policy (TIP) framework in Colombia and the translation process carried out by Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) policy actors, emphasizing the implications of this process for governance. Using the Colombian Green Book 2030 case study and its regional implementation, the article examines how the TIP framework has been adopted by stakeholders and reinterpreted in peripheral contexts. A qualitative study with an interpretive approach was conducted based on 30 semi-structured interviews with individuals involved in the analyzed transfer process, as well as observations and document reviews. The findings suggest that institutional inertia has influenced the appropriation of the TIP framework in Colombia, leading to its association with prior social innovation experiences that align with some of the framework's characteristics. This includes participation and the inclusion of local actors. The framework was reinterpreted to address specific local issues through niche configurations rather than destabilizing socio-technical regimes. This frames transformative change within policy instruments designed under a bottom-up model. Nevertheless, the territorial level has emerged as a key space for TIP experimentation, offering opportunities to explore other STI applications oriented toward social concerns. The study concludes that transferring the transformative framework provides an opportunity to reconsider STI policy governance.
Nowadays online public services are an essential component of government operations influencing significantly citizens perception and satisfaction. The research aims to assess the quality of online administrative services provided by local public administration, by exploring suitable methods and tools for evaluating the quality of public services in an online environment.
The paper is structured into four sections, focusing on topics such as public services, the evaluation of online services and the situation in Romania. In this respect a mixed methods approach is used to present the case study of Suceava City Hall. Findings indicate that the online services provided by Suceava City Hall largely align with citizen expectations, highlighting trust, security, and usefulness as key quality factors. However, the overall satisfaction level remains at a moderate level. The conclusions and final recommendations emphasize the importance of orienting online services towards solving citizens' problems.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
Von Schomberg’s call to place mutual responsiveness – which I understand as the ability of researchers and the research system as a whole to foster meaningful exchanges and learn from novel experiences, no matter where those originate – at the core of Open Science and related efforts to reform the scientific landscape is both timely and significant. Widespread sharing is not enough to guarantee responsible and inclusive research, nor are vague appeals to improve research culture, whatever it is that such culture may turn out to include (Leonelli, 2023). Rather, emphasis needs to be placed on the conditions under which sharing materials, methods and insights – and debating the goals and directions towards which these may be put to use – may improve research exchange, communication and scrutiny, resulting in scientific outputs that are both reliable and socially responsive. Hence von Schomberg’s focus on the interplay between institutional and behavioural features of science and his plea for a reform in governance structures, such as initiated by COARA, are very well-taken. He is, however, too quick to dismiss the importance of some degree of autonomy for those involved in creating knowledge. To show why this matters, I here briefly discuss two of von Schomberg’s additional claims: (1) his focus on ‘knowledge actors’ as the protagonists of research efforts; and (2) his critique of the effectiveness of self-governance efforts by researchers.
This article explores educational public relations by analyzing publicity material that urged public school administrators and educators to adopt formal public relations programs in the 1920s and 1930s. This moment represents a critical juncture for the United States’ public schools, and understanding the motivations behind the push for publicity programs can help us better understand the diverse contexts in which public relations strategies and tactics have been deployed. This study addresses the call for public relations history to broaden its scope of inquiry beyond corporate and political communication and allows for a more complete historical picture of public relations as a field.
After the fall of communist regime in Romania, the structure of Romania’s Government Working Apparatus (the Government Office) was subject to several reforms trying to establish an adequate role for each of the entities. Although the composition of the Government Working Apparatus may vary, its central piece is the General Secretariat of the Government (GSG), which, in governments with a strong prime minister, has tried to share power with the Prime Minister’s Chancellery.
The aim of this paper is to explore the evolution of the reforms of the Government’s Working Apparatus (Government Office) in Romania after 2001 and how the functions between the General Secretariat of Government and the Prime Minister’s Chancellery are divided after the recent reforms within the Centre of Government in order to assure a better coordination. The methodology of this paper consists in a content analysis of the legal framework, public administration reform strategies, technical reports of some projects conducted by the General Secretariat of Romania’s Government and World Bank’s studies and reports. This paper reports aspects on a longitudinal study between 2001-2021, which set out to examine and evaluate the roles of different organisational structure within Romania’s Government Office. The empirical data of this paper were also collected through a series of discussions with top public policy makers in charge with reform of central public administration.
The General Secretariat of the Government (GSG) has always possessed a central role in the structure of the Government Office, its part being to assure the technical and strategic operations regarding Government acts and to solve the organisational, judicial, economic, and technical problems of Government and prime-minister’s activity, also the representation of the Government in the justice. GSG is the element of connection and stability of governance that assures the framework for decision making process.
Recently, in February 2020, the Orban Government has approved two government decisions by which both the Prime Minister’s Chancellery and the General Secretariat of the Government have been reorganised. Both measures were part of the priorities of the Government Program, namely improving the efficiency of public administration, aiming at reforming the Centre of Government. Thus, the functions of the two structures were better defined and delimited, in the sense that the General Secretariat of the Government was to provide the technical / administrative secretariat of the Government, while the Chancellery would have the role of strategic coordination. In this sense, within the Chancellery operated the Centre for Analysis and Strategy and the Independent Scientific Council, while subordinated to the General Secretariat of the Government were the institutions which were to provide data and information to the Chancellery for analysis and studies that would underpin public policy programs. The essential role of the Chancellery thus became to coordinate the ministries in the process of elaboration and monitoring of the institutional strategic plans, to approve the governmental strategies, precisely to ensure the correlation of these strategies, as well as to correlate the elaboration, implementation and monitoring of public policies.
Unfortunately, this reform was implemented only for a short period of time and nowadays, in January 2021, when a new prime-minister has come, the role of the Chancellery was diminished once again. Its role was focused on communication and relation with media and on the coordination, at the level of the Government Office, of the reform process regarding public administration and relation with civil society and social partners.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
It can be argued that nursing professionals are the backbone of any healthcare system. The article grappled with the question of why nurses are resigning from Chitungwiza Central Hospital (CCH) in large numbers to the point of nearly crippling public healthcare service delivery at Harare’s dormitory town situated 30 kilometres from the capital. Using survey methodology and application of SPSS, the study sought to identify both the root causes and possible solutions (retention strategies) for addressing the resignation of nursing professionals at CCH. Better remuneration, a safe work environment, increased internal communication, recognition and fulfilment of professional ambitions are some of the solutions identified through survey research for addressing the problem of resignation of nurses in large numbers.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
VRABIE Tincuța , CRISTACHE Nicoleta , NĂSTASE Marian
Performance evaluation plays an important role in any organization as an autonomous legal entity with material and human resources, which are needed to achieve its objectives. Since it is a management tool, in order to understand the process of performance evaluation, it is necessary to understand the methodological activities based on the stages, cases, principles, methods, techniques, procedures, and processes, and which are impacted by the behaviour of each member of that organization in order to ensure the achievement of the indicators set by managers, i.e. to guarantee performance. Implementing the Balance Scorecard in public services is important and must start from the challenge related to the performance level, posed to public service managers from the perspective of public service beneficiaries. Evidence has shown inefficient and even lack of transparency concerning the development strategy of a public service related to its beneficiaries. Therefore, the main focus of managers, regardless of their position in the organization, must be on the indicators which assess the degree of satisfaction of public service beneficiaries, employees, the range of procedures, processes, and the dynamics of results.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
Within engineering, economics, and the natural sciences, sustainable aviation is often configured as an ecological and economic problem, which can be solved through technological innovation. In contrast to this, we set up a research project centering on social innovation, named Human demands of sustainable aviation. In the project, we combined theories from Feminist Science and Technology Studies (FSTS) with methods from Participatory Design (PD) and practice-based Ontological Design (OD). In this paper, we use our project as a case study to analyze and discuss how users and non-users are configured within different disciplinary contexts. The findings illustrate that conceptualizations and categorizations of users and non-users are not stable. They denote highly situated phenomena that emerge out of different research approaches and understandings of innovation. Power structures that are entangled with the positions researchers take, including specific theories, methods, and (implicit) values, pervade these contexts and understandings. With this in mind, we advocate for power-critical reflections on the performative effects of knowledge making as processes of world making and for inter- and transdisciplinary research to do justice to the different life worlds we inhabit. We further argue that innovation should be based on collectively negotiated visions of how we want to live in the future, instead of predictions that project our current realities into the status quo of tomorrow.
Innovation is becoming more and more participatory. Discourses insisting on the desirable involvement of users and lay citizens in innovation-making processes are burgeoning around the globe. This burgeoning is often fostered and supported by innovation scholars whose studies on, and calls for more open and participatory forms of innovation have recently gained traction among public authorities. However, as the appropriation of such scholarly work by public authorities is a recent phenomenon, much remains to be discovered about the interactions between participatory innovation models and the political contexts in which they emerge. In particular, this article offers an analysis of the relationships and allocation of power between the State and citizens that develop through participatory innovation policies. By developing a context-sensitive approach to study the case of Wallonia, one of the federal regions of Belgium, I analyze participatory innovation as a particular mode of government through which public authorities (re)invent themselves and the society they govern. I show that what matters for Walloon public authorities when they promote and set up participatory innovation practices is not only the results of such practices in terms of innovation products, but also and perhaps more importantly the shaping of entrepreneurial citizens as well as the Region that is expected to develop accordingly. Ultimately, this approach allows for critical scrutiny of the politics of innovation and the democratic order it contributes to produce in an economically peripheral region looking for quickly (re)developing itself in order to exist in the global economic competition.
This book is designed to provide complete and in-depth descriptions of the digital impact on the urban planning process. Through the four scenarios proposed in the book reflecting the issues and processes at local level, the author allows the reader to have an overall understanding of the influence of digital mechanisms on urban planning. In this regard, in the author’s opinion, the four scenarios correspond to four categories of urbanism: algorithmic urbanism, uberized urbanism, wiki-urbanism and open-source urbanism.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
Users have no doubt become popular in innovation research. They are not considered a passive mass of adopters but as a more or less active agency in innovation processes. Diffusion research has, for instance, distinguished between several adopter categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. These categories can be mapped on the diffusion s-curve and indicate a temporal order along which innovations may be analysed. However, early or late adopters were still seen primarily as adopters. Concepts such as “reinvention” or “domestication” then put more emphasis on the ways in which an innovation may be changed within the adoption process. In these cases, innovations came from elsewhere (i.e., manufacturers), but the users were credited with more creative potential than simply adopting novelties. The turn towards user-driven innovations decidedly shifted the creative potential towards (specific) user groups, transgressing the traditional distinction between producers and consumers.
The involvement of users in innovation processes has been addressed under different labels, for instance, user innovation, open innovation, or participatory design and from different fields such as management and innovation research, science and technology studies, or social innovation studies. The main gist of these approaches lies in reclaiming hitherto neglected aspects, perspectives, or sources of innovations, thus arguing against a top-down producer-centred models of innovation by emphasising bottom-up user-centred modes of innovation. They reconfigure ideas about pushes and pulls, about the constellations and locales in which invention and diffusion occur, and about the transformations of innovations as they emerge and evolve over time and space.
This thematic issue of NOvation seeks to shed light on this increasing popularity of “the user” in innovation studies. We gather here contributions from diverse backgrounds that critically focus on the role of users in innovation studies, from empowerment and emancipation to valorisation and exploitation. We especially addressed the questions of why users have become popular both empirically and conceptually across a range of fields and spanning from academia to politics and civil society. How does user-centred innovation relate to more traditional models of producer-centred innovation? Which role do critical users play in innovation research? Are there specific fields in which users are seen to be more active than in others? Especially, who is considered to be a user or customer?
NICA Elvira, LUȚAN (PETRE) Anca Georgeta , SABIE Oana Matilda
et al.
This article presents ways to motivate teachers in Romania and other European countries, based on the analysis of educational policy documents, legislative documents, curricular ones that underlie the motivation of education staff, and the literature on career management. Using the Eurostat database, we analyzed and estimated the level of motivation of teachers in pre-university education. For the education system and teaching career management, it has been observed that financial motivation factor is not the most important one, but professional development and the pleasure of teaching are, and the responsibility is assumed together with the recognition of their efforts. The main challenge is to determine the most appropriate ways to motivate teachers in order to increase their performance.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
POPESCU Ruxandra-Irina, BUNEA Ovidiu-Iulian, MAZILU Elena-Cătălina
et al.
The global Coronavirus pandemic has affected many aspects of social life, with large gatherings being banned or limited, which meant that major cultural events have suffered, some being canceled, others being moved online. The third category of events took place under the conditions of the „new normal” with severe restrictions in order to ensure the safety of participants in terms of health. This study analyzed the way in which major cultural events in Romania were affected by the pandemic, such as the Art Safari Festival, the George Enescu Festival or the Sibiu International Theater Festival, but also how the public's perception of these events may have changed as a result of the decision of the organizers to keep them under the conditions of the new normal. The results of the study in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic show that the participants in the cultural events perceive that the three analyzed festivals contribute to a large extent to the urban development of the host cities, while their notoriety represents the main weakness.
Public relations. Industrial publicity, Political institutions and public administration (General)
Since the early 20th century, public relations has been implicated in the production and sustainment of celebrity. Celebrities rely on the work of publicists to strategically cast, produce, and place discourses within spheres of popular culture. Through an extended interview with Alan Nierob, publicist of transgender celebrity Caitlyn Jenner, this article is an analysis of celebrity public relations as a site of cultural intermediation. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, capital, and fields, this article sheds light on the practice of celebrity public relations to understand how publicists leverage cultural and social capital to construct legitimacy for their clients. This study contributes to a broader sociological understanding of celebrity public relations and opens new avenues for research in considering how publicity might translate into broader socio-political impacts.
In the process of overcoming the knowledge gap we need to begin from the fact that interest in societal problems and societal events does not develop automatically in people at ali. Family and free time subjectively seem closer to people. To this we need to add that people with a lower level of education find it difficult to establish a personal relationship toward complex societal situations and complex societal problems, which would awaken an interest in searching for and receiving information on them. In order for this relationship toward information to be activated it is necessary, among other things, to theoretically and practically research the phenomenon of active search for, and reception of, information. Searching for information is constantly linked to subjectively seen and experienced events and problems, which treat mass media based on the usefulness of information. Therefore, it is a task of primary importance for the mass media to present societal problems to various social groups as subjective problems. In relation to the topic of the mass media, people with a higher level of education have an advantage because their general knowledge is at the same time their for knowledge or previously gained information. Such persons will accept the presented subject easier. Apart from that, existing foreknowledge acts stimulatingly and activates the search for information, while weaker of nonexistent for knowledge is de-stimulating in this sense, so those persons remain without a stance, and with that, also without a behaviour and orientation in life.
Communication. Mass media, Public relations. Industrial publicity
This article studies ways of dealing with the tension between a commitment to sustainable and responsible research and anticipated market requirements in the midstream of a research process in architecture and construction. Using a slightly modified version of Socio-Technical Integration Research (STIR), we explored the chances of questioning the primacy of the techno-economic innovation paradigm by deliberately provoking reflections through STIR interactions. Our research underlines the difficulties and limitations of challenging an orientation towards values of efficiency and productivity in favour of social and environmental values in the midstream of the research process and examines how the techno-economic innovation paradigm is able to insulate itself against critical questioning. It sheds light at the critical role of the underlying assumption that marketability of prospective outcomes is not one objective amongst others but the precondition for all others and at two argumentative patterns we termed the "lack-of-agency" and the "reconciliation-after-all" pattern.
The paper addresses social innovation both as a mode and as a means of social change. It draws on the recent developments in the sociology of repair to offer a critical reading of pro-innovation discourse on the level of EU policy. It is argued that the practices and concepts of social innovation on the level of EU policy can be fruitfully reframed within a repair narrative, whereas the proliferation of the buzzword social innovation warrants a closer look from an innovation studies perspective. Connecting both repair and innovation studies thus offers a more nuanced understanding of current societal transformations and adds to the conceptual discussion of social change and social order.
After the publication of the fourth (2018) edition of the Oslo Manual, a key methodological reference for producing innovation statistics at international level, a review of the definitions of innovation – or, better, business innovation – used by the community of official statisticians has to be recommended. The main reason for such a review is the need to assess to what extent the current Oslo Manual has benefited from the rich economic and management literature on firms’ innovation produced since the publication of the previous edition in 2005. It should also be pointed out that the current Manual was expected to fix some long-standing issues like that of properly accommodating service innovation in a statistical framework constantly biased towards innovation in tangible goods and technology-related phenomena. This article argues that these challenges have been only partially met. By reviving some concepts used in the past, such as the object-oriented approach to measure innovation, and being especially concerned to make the statistical framework designed to measure business innovation applicable in other sectors of the economy (including individuals and households), some specific features of the business innovation processes may have been neglected. The Manual discusses a wide array of issues regarding the economics of innovation and management practices, however it does not define a new consistent framework able to accommodate the demand for indicators about the influence on business innovation of the ongoing processes of digitalization, servitization or open innovation and, at least partially, to adopt a service-dominant logic.