Adam Bronstone

This book looks at how to build more resilience into socio-economic networks within local communities. Understanding the relationships between attachment to place, complex systems and patterns of knowledge creation is not straightforward, but these relationships are emerging as the challenges that we face in bridging the gap between the social worlds that we inhabit and an emerging digital world.These issues have been brought into even sharper focus through changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, forced familiarity with communication technologies is driving globalisation forwards, whilst on the other, the crisis has created awareness of dependencies and heightened desires for more local solutions. Plenty of books have been written about the rise of digital networks and the decline of local communities. This book takes a radical approach by identifying how these trends fit together and provides examples of how digital networks can be made to work for the local as well as the global economy. Using a case study approach, the book offers a clear-sighted view of the role of relational capital in specific places and organisations and shows the transformational impact that they can have at a micro level.The book deliberately seeks to shake up preconceived ideas and is ideal for strategy practitioners and policy makers within governments and NGOs involved in connecting local to wider network economies.

This book looks at how to build more resilience into socio-economic networks within local communities. Understanding the relationships between attachment to place, complex systems and patterns of knowledge creation is not straightforward, but these relationships are emerging as the challenges that we face in bridging the gap between the social worlds that we inhabit and an emerging digital world.These issues have been brought into even sharper focus through changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, forced familiarity with communication technologies is driving globalisation forwards, whilst on the other, the crisis has created awareness of dependencies and heightened desires for more local solutions. Plenty of books have been written about the rise of digital networks and the decline of local communities. This book takes a radical approach by identifying how these trends fit together and provides examples of how digital networks can be made to work for the local as well as the global economy. Using a case study approach, the book offers a clear-sighted view of the role of relational capital in specific places and organisations and shows the transformational impact that they can have at a micro level.The book deliberately seeks to shake up preconceived ideas and is ideal for strategy practitioners and policy makers within governments and NGOs involved in connecting local to wider network economies.

This title was first published in 2000: Both NATO and the European Union are in the early stages of enlargement processes that will see both organizations expand to include a number of former Communist countries from Central Europe. Simultaneously, these processes ignore and exclude the interests and concerns of Russia and Turkey, respectively in the name of European security. Are both of these processes condemned to fail because of what was left out, rather than put in, to the organizational mix of both alliances? Is the leadership of NATO, for example, making the single largest, and costliest, blunder in the history of the organization? And is this being done, as well as that by the European Union, in part because of narrowly-held theoretical perspectives that define security in the most minimalist terms? Too often these processes of enlargement are discussed both out of context and in seclusion from one another, as if neither affects the other in any way, shape or form. This work brings together both processes of enlargement in order to examine whether or not similar mistakes are being made by both organizations, with grave practical consequences. This work will also examine both processes of enlargement from a critical perspective in that it will challenge the theoretically-driven conventional wisdoms of both processes. By doing so, this work will illustrate the need to go beyond these theories of International Relations and advocate the use of a number of non-traditional and very alternative positions that will assist one in developing richer, more comprehensive and inclusive explanations and understandings of these processes, as well as the field of International Relations in general. This work seeks to challenge the current state of International Relations, broadly defined, on its own ground in the hopes of presenting and developing, something newer and exciting for tomorrow.

Globalization and technology are combining to change socio-economic relationships. The pace of change and uncertainty of the world of work – no job for life, zero-hours contracts, diminished pension rights and a growing delivery dependence on digital networks over human contact – are creating a profound unease that may be unprecedented in the Western world. If organizational patterns are not sufficiently adjusted and businesses continue as usual, we run the risk of alienating entire groups within society with many feeling ‘left behind’. Using deliberately accessible language for students and the general reader, the authors draw upon socially innovative models of economic organization from the nineteenth century to present a model to master this new economy for the common good. The book illustrates, with practical examples, how digital networks can be leveraged and provides a common checklist to identify suitable conditions for organizations to flourish and provide the means to more effectively evaluate opportunities.

Globalization and technology are combining to change socio-economic relationships. The pace of change and uncertainty of the world of work – no job for life, zero-hours contracts, diminished pension rights and a growing delivery dependence on digital networks over human contact – are creating a profound unease that may be unprecedented in the Western world. If organizational patterns are not sufficiently adjusted and businesses continue as usual, we run the risk of alienating entire groups within society with many feeling ‘left behind’. Using deliberately accessible language for students and the general reader, the authors draw upon socially innovative models of economic organization from the nineteenth century to present a model to master this new economy for the common good. The book illustrates, with practical examples, how digital networks can be leveraged and provides a common checklist to identify suitable conditions for organizations to flourish and provide the means to more effectively evaluate opportunities.

This title was first published in 2000: Both NATO and the European Union are in the early stages of enlargement processes that will see both organizations expand to include a number of former Communist countries from Central Europe. Simultaneously, these processes ignore and exclude the interests and concerns of Russia and Turkey, respectively in the name of European security. Are both of these processes condemned to fail because of what was left out, rather than put in, to the organizational mix of both alliances? Is the leadership of NATO, for example, making the single largest, and costliest, blunder in the history of the organization? And is this being done, as well as that by the European Union, in part because of narrowly-held theoretical perspectives that define security in the most minimalist terms? Too often these processes of enlargement are discussed both out of context and in seclusion from one another, as if neither affects the other in any way, shape or form. This work brings together both processes of enlargement in order to examine whether or not similar mistakes are being made by both organizations, with grave practical consequences. This work will also examine both processes of enlargement from a critical perspective in that it will challenge the theoretically-driven conventional wisdoms of both processes. By doing so, this work will illustrate the need to go beyond these theories of International Relations and advocate the use of a number of non-traditional and very alternative positions that will assist one in developing richer, more comprehensive and inclusive explanations and understandings of these processes, as well as the field of International Relations in general. This work seeks to challenge the current state of International Relations, broadly defined, on its own ground in the hopes of presenting and developing, something newer and exciting for tomorrow.