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This paper aims to present a systematic literature review that discusses the importance of Stakeholder Management (SM) and Communication Management (CM) for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Through a systematic search in three databases, 35 studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria and addressed the area of SM and CM, focusing on the perception of the influence of CM on stakeholder engagement and satisfaction of their needs, as a Critical Success Factor (CSF) for project success. A mapping of the findings is also presented. Additionally, the limitations found in the literature were discussed and possibilities for future research are proposed. The study emphasizes the relevance of SM and CM for the success of NGO projects and highlights the need for more strategic and integrated approaches to managing these factors. Thus, this article contributes to the debate on SM and CM in NGO projects, offering effective practices for the successful management of these CSF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity has long been an area of interest for music education. Interculturalism, with its emphasis on cultural competence, dialogue, and humility, has emerged as a popular concept for the negotiation of difference in music education. Based on an examination of the international non-governmental organization-sponsored intercultural music exchange program, Ethno World, the authors ask, "In what ways can the intercultural activities of the Ethno World program be understood in light of Global North and South experiences, and what implications might these activities hold for music education?" Deploying the postcolonial framework of coloniality and the Central-South American concept of interculturalidad, the authors argue that intercultural efforts in music education must be careful not to inadvertently deepen Global North-South divisions by treating interculturalism as a problem of knowledge, thereby overlooking or bracketing out colonial histories that benefit those in the Global North at the expense of those in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of History Pages is the property of National Technical University of Ukraine KPI and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Development Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the professional values of self-employed photographers and other communication professionals who have worked for both journalism and humanitarian nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). These professionals face the current changes in the media work environment and expand their reach to different fields to find new work opportunities. The study focuses on the photographers’ motivations and professional values in addition to NGO–journalism relations. The findings show that pushing factors in the journalistic field, along with pulling factors in NGO work, motivate photographers to choose advocacy work. When photographers change from photojournalism to NGO photography, they must adhere to new professional values and ethics that mix with their existing values and which may occasionally contradict with photojournalistic working methods or the marketing and fundraising images at the NGOs, causing ethical dilemmas. Finally, photographers with a photojournalism background help NGOs gain news media publicity, yet they are rarely able to change the news agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this work is to explore the international humanitarian relief organizations in Taiwan, and find the most crucial performance indicators of humanitarian logistics, according to the experience and opinion of those large NGOs in Taiwan. The research gathered detailed information on situations from literature and collected the data by questionnaire. Based on the information gathered from questionnaires, quantitative weight was calculated through the participation of experts by using AHP in this research. According to the humanitarian relief organizations' experiences and opinion in this research, the most critical performance indicators in humanitarian relief logistics is responsiveness, and the following is agility, reliability, cost, and dialog with authorities. Although the AHP method has been applied in many research of performance indicators chosen, there is no research using AHP to prioritize the performance indicators in the humanitarian logistics field, especially in Taiwan. Future research could include the smaller or reputable organizations in Taiwan to get more comprehensive opinions. Besides, the chosen indicators could be utilized in the actual case of humanitarian rescue action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on ethnographic fieldwork between August 2012 and August 2018, this article explores the influence of artisanal promotion agents on the woven crafts of Chaco, Argentina. The influence of artisanal promotion agents (APAs) is decisive and heterogeneous – they play a significant role in influencing the craftspersons' decisions about what they make for sale. Built on presumptions of what is inherent to the culture of the Chaco weavers, APAs make suggestions as to the colors, materials and shapes adopted by the craftspeople. In the case of colour, the influences of the agents go unnoticed, but in regards to the shape, their advice has been significant. This article explores how APAs communicate their suggestions to craftspeople through images and prototypes, simultaneously managing the capacity to diversify production and maximise commercial impact. Those who manage these record/communication systems have great influence on the production and commercialization of crafts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista FAMECOS - Mídia, Cultura e Tecnologia is the property of EDIPUCRS - Editora Universitaria da PUCRS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Public health projects carried out by non-government organisations (NGOs) are considered a critical contributor in the provision of health services to rural population in India. But there is clear lack of documented evidence that describes the capacity and competency of the NGO project managers to successfully design and implement a new project. This article presents findings of an exploratory case study using outreach model of family planning service delivery as an example to understand the steps and actions taken by senior managers throughout the project's life cycle and competencies required by them to execute the project. Focus group discussion followed by paper-based survey using sections of Management Competency Assessment Tool was conducted with senior managers of the chosen NGO. The results indicate that the strategies developed by the NGO managers are consistent with the existing literature on project management. However, not all managers have the same level of confidence in demonstrating the competencies of (a) knowledge of healthcare environment; (b) evidence informed decision making; and (c) interpersonal, communication qualities and relationship management. The organisation needs to invest in human resource development using mixed approach of providing training, team building activities, mentoring, and support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Cold War, Austria was a country of first asylum for people attempting to flee the so-called "Eastern Bloc." Although the Austrian government used its help for these refugees as part of its foreign policy agenda to increase international prestige, politicians and public perceived Austria first and foremost as a transit country. One of the main strategies employed by the government to solve "refugee crises" was to call for international support and for the admission of refugees to other countries. This article highlights the work of international organizations on behalf of refugees in Austria, focusing particularly on the work of the UNHCR in five major refugee movements to Austria: Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1981, GDR 1989, and Romania 1989/90. In doing so, it connects support for refugees to the political and economic frameworks of the period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Organizational ethnography reveals environmental governance actors' internal logics. • Organizational and institutional ethnography are methodologically distinct. • Builds methodological foundations for ethnography of environmental organizations. • Illustrates practicalities and contributions of an organizational approach. • Describes historical development and rationalities of neoliberal conservation. This article identifies three methodological approaches for ethnography of environmental governance: place-based ethnography, institutional ethnography, and organizational ethnography. These approaches are ideal types distinguished by how they define the 'field' where the ethnographer works. Place-based ethnography is well-established methodologically, but institutional and organizational ethnography are frequently conflated, and methodological guidance for ethnography of environmental organizations is scant. Organizational ethnography makes vital contributions to environmental governance scholarship, however, by revealing internal logics and everyday rationalities of powerful environmental actors and processes. The article therefore expands on the methodological foundations for organizational ethnography of environmental governance, using ethnographic research on the tropical forest conservation programs of an international environmental organization to illustrate research practicalities and substantive contributions of an organizational approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Global Civil Society is considered as mostly an idealistic notion, the international nongovernmental organization called The PLAN International makes effective contributions to the fight for security of children's in particular girls' rights and equality through "Because I am a Girl" campaign and achieve successful changes through mutually beneficial partnership with the UN Women. The eagerness to observe the notion of global civil society in action made me look in depth of the hard work that has been done and is going nowadays by one of international non-governmental organizations called PLAN International. The PLAN International promote the faith in the youngsters and focus on rights for protection, health and education. Its beneficial contribution through active participation in civil society prosperity and campaigns for change, such as "Because I am a Girl" not only constructed its authority on the international arena but makes us construct a better governance and grow a stronger society overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numeric abstractions relied upon by modern water management are reductive by design, but their political effects need not be reductionist, as an example from Bengaluru attests. Prompted by a water supply crisis that briefly shut down an IT corridor, one multinational corporation looked to a small environmental consultancy named Avaani, and its customised enumerative technologies - metering, tariff design, water audits and environmental balance ledgers - to mitigate water scarcity and its corresponding business interruptions. This occasioned the meeting and merging of two understandings of water: the modern water stripped of place and history that is so sought by the corporation in its daily water provisioning, and the water that is imbued with moral imperatives and local histories and which is tended by the non-profit organisation. As the enumerative idioms of Avaani soon proliferated throughout the corporation and its public outreach, the non-profit largely avoided the reduction, alienation and abstraction that characterises governmental enumeration; it did so in two ways: by using data collection as a 'spin-off' to curate and compound friendly encounters between people and water, and by embedding water accounting with moral considerations. This case shows how enumerative regimes, depending on their design and deployment, may contribute to a more multiple and multiply contextualised sense of water, even in situations of water scarcity where reductionist measurement tends to abound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While digitalization remains high on the agenda of most private sector organizations, many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) still struggle, due to budget constraints (Merkel et al. 2007). A concept that might be helpful in this context is lightweight IT. It describes "a socio-technical knowledge regime, driven by competent users' need for solutions, enabled by the consumerization of digital technology, and realized through innovation processes" (Bygstad 2017). By building on existing solutions and focusing on the user, NGOs might circumvent high IT spending and sub-optimal IT solutions that do not fit users' needs. A use case analysis along the NGO value chain shows that ~1/3 of the use cases identified from literature already represent lightweight IT examples. Nonetheless, certain lightweight IT solutions successfully deployed in the private sector like RPA do not appear at all, leaving room for future exploration and improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Governance Review / Revue Gouvernance is the property of University of Ottawa, Center on Governance and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nowadays, the dietary behaviour of consumers is an economic and societal concern. Affecting this behaviour remains consequently a challenge for the groups of influences. In this article, we focus on the influence that lobbies and NGOs can exert on the dietary behaviour of consumers. We provide a comprehensive overview and we link the theoretical and empirical economic literature to the influence strategies of these two actors. To be specific, three strategies are exposed and examined: information campaigns, labels and also the dissemination of misinformation. We conclude with a discussion on the consequences and the limits of those influence strategies on certain food sectors (meat, milk and sweet products). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Romania is among the states with a low rate of volunteering. According to existing data, one could notice that only 10-19% of the population was involved in voluntary activities in the last years. The difference between Romania, on the one hand, and Western Europe, on the other is the result of a historical evolution. In Western Europe, in average, more than 40% of the total number of the population is involved in volunteering, this being the case for Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The present paper intends to identify the way in which the Romanian NGOs used different media to promote their activities and what are the practical results for those organizations. As a general research assumption, we had the following statement: The communication channels used by NGOs could influence the way they accomplish their purpose and mission. As secondary assumptions, we have: (1) The story conveyed is more important than the presence on different communication platforms and (2) In Non-Governmental Organizations the efficiency of external communication is directly proportional with the efficiency of internal communication. The main research method used was the interview which was applied to a sample of ten respondents working in the non-governmental sector in Romania, all from the same NGO. The results of the study indicate that Romanian NGOs use new types of media (social media, websites, online newspapers, blogs) to promote themselves. Field events organized by Romanian NGOs are mostly interactive, gathering people and volunteers in parks, cinemas and theaters to enter into different activities with their target audiences composed mainly of young people aged 14-18 which came from disadvantaged social categories). The results have confirmed both the main hypothesis and both secondary hypotheses. The members of Romanian NGOs stated that their presence online as representatives of the voluntary activities had helped them in fulfilling their missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article covers the historical period that preceded the privatization reform of the print media in modern Ukraine (1991-2013). The content of first draft laws on privatization, prepared both by state and non-state institutions and organizations, is analyzed, the meanings of public debates that took place around these processes are considered. Based on the analysis of different types of historical sources, it is proved that during this period the country possessed all the necessary conditions for legislative and political changes in the print media: key issues to be addressed were identified and spotlighted, psychological rationale for future perception of privatization reform by state-operated printed media staff was prepared. However, despite the creation of a certain basis for the successful implementation of media reform, the reform process turned out to be unnaturally long, lasting more than 20 years. The conclusion is substantiated that although such a situation is traditionally associated only with a lack of political will of authorities, in reality the cause of this delay stemmed from various factors. On the one hand -- lack of legal norms, opposition of post-communist elites, influence of large business groups which managed to establish control over the media space of Ukraine for some time, and on the other hand -- weak motivation for revolutionary changes in many editorial boards of newspapers and magazines, which for a long time sought to preserve the Soviet tradition -- patronage by the State. The specificity of Ukraine was that, despite declaring Europe-oriented approach, Ukrainian legislation on the print media functioning hesitated to follow European experience. The explanation of this paradoxical situation is obviously to be found in deep processes of the slow transformation of Ukrainian society, which still requires systematic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of VertigO is the property of La Revue Electronique en Sciences de l'Environnement VertigO and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Sociología del Trabajo is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study focuses on the perceptions of NGO senior executives regarding their involvement in the design and implementation of education policy in Israel. We applied a qualitative research method, conducting in-depth interviews with NGO senior executives who provided rich and comprehensive descriptions of their perceptions. Data analysis revealed the following themes: (a) policy of cross-sector partnership in education (b) mutual responsibility for education, and (c) the benefit of NGO involvement in education. This study provides theoretical contributions and practical implications of NGO involvement in shaping and implementing education policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at giving a perspective of the role that NGOs play in the society and economy, the financing opportunities that Romanian NGOs have and the way they take advantage of these opportunities in order to grow and have impact in society. The studies on financial behavior in Romania reveal that the income sources of the non-governmental organizations became diversified during the last years, the most significant financial incomes for NGOs remaining grants or contracts from the European Union and from foreign or international foundations. But in the same time, the analyzed data reveal that the changing legislation has a significant influence on the financing trends of NGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's entry into Afghanistan as a NATO ally was widely considered a necessary military venture, but Canadian operations during the reconstruction period that ensued were criticized as having tarnished Canada's reputation on the international stage. Canada's history as a peacekeeping nation and its perceived middle power status did initially allow it to act as a mediator between the Afghan government, local actors, and the international community. However, our research discovered that Canada did not fully understand the dynamics of the established civil society structures in Afghanistan, nor the ways in which they influence local politics. A limited understanding of "civil society" among Canadian officials and disproportionate focus on professionalized NGOs as its most legitimate representative meant that local civil society groups in Afghanistan and the role they could play to establish democratic structures were largely ignored. By complementing knowledge synthesis of existing scholarly and policy literature with interviews with Canadian and Afghan aid workers, this article examines the process of post-conflict rebuilding in Afghanistan, considering how neglecting Afghan civil society has resulted in less durable social structures. We also examine Canada's image as an international mediator, and identify new ways of assisting rebuilding processes to ensure more durable and peaceful outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On April 17, 2014, the Democratic majority, formed in Parliament after the escape of former President Viktor Yanukovych, voted for the new Law on Public Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine. It launched one of the most critical media reforms, capable of creating a truly independent, powerful, and influential media. Subsequently, the Agreement of the Parliamentary Member Coalition "European Ukraine," convened by the Parliament members after the 2014 parliamentary elections, listed several steps to reform the media sector as priorities of social and humanitarian reform. Reform prohibiting printed media by state bodies and local authorities was necessary. The Law of Ukraine «On Reforming State and Local Printed Media» was passed at the end of 2015. According to this law, the state authorities and local self-governing bodies were obliged to become partial founders of the print media or to transfer the print media, established by the central executive bodies, into the status of an official print media. It took three years to reform all state periodicals. It took place in two stages: the first -- during 2016, the second -- during 2017-2018. The first phase was to become «pilot,» last for one year and cover publications that voluntarily agreed to the change. The purpose of this phase was also to identify potential obstacles to reform and elaborate relevant legislative mechanisms in response. In the second, the voluntary-told phase, the rest of the periodicals had join the reform. Whether to volunteer for reform in the first phase or to wait for the second phase had to be decided by the end of March 2016. On December 31, 2018, one of the most extensive media reforms in Ukraine -- the Printed State and Local Media -- ended. Ukraine has fulfilled its commitment to the Council of Europe and the Ukrainian society to limit the influence of state and local authorities on the press and to create an equal ground for printed media of different ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of International Social Research is the property of Journal of International Social Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the last decades, Romania faces massive woodcuts due to various political changes, agricultural crop expansion, urban development, cattle farming, mining for gas, minerals and oils and transportation. Deforestation has become a problem of national interest since the 20th century that threatens economic, social and natural balance. Researchers in this field highlights that forest alienation to foreigners is one of the main causes that led to the use of Romanian wood as a factor of economic growth for other states that currently hold 51% of the forest lands in our country. According to the data provided by Landmatrix, Austria, Sweden, Finland are the largest owners of forests, due to the extremely low price and permissive legislation. This paper aims to identify the main ways and possibilities to include Romanian NGOs in reforestation actions in order to restore biodiversity and restore the natural ecosystems balance. This desideratum is possible through the intense involvement of the state structures that manage the forest system based on the economic foundation of artificial reforestation projects in the less favored areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Excavations can cause tension between local spatial interests at excavation sites and the demand for national resources. Policymakers have to weigh up the choices in sustainability trade-offs between the geological and geographical aspects. This shows in the developments of resource and spatial policies. A novel historical approach investigates the long-term sustainable dynamics of gravel excavation and land use policies in the Netherlands in a transnational context, assessing the roles of local, national and international actors. Amid the gradual merging of land use and resource policies, this article reveals how local spatial and sustainability aspects prevailed and resulted in offshoring a geologically abundant natural resource and its connected sustainability issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In 2017, China announced its first policy framework for establishing a national park system, along with ten pilot national parks. Rather than viewing the announcement from a techno-bureaucratic perspective, this paper considers the politics of the proposed national park system. Basing my argument upon a case study and employing discourse analysis, I argue that the top-down approach is prioritised in the planning and management of the national park system, and that the involvement of civil society groups in the making of China's national parks does not guarantee an inclusive and bottom-up approach. From the 1970s onwards, worldwide the conservation paradigm gradually shifted to recognise the importance of a participatory and inclusive approach to protected area management. China's moving away from such understanding and practice may eventually undermine the rights of local communities and threaten to hamper the conservation goals that the national parks aim to achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Governance Review / Revue Gouvernance is the property of University of Ottawa, Center on Governance and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Observatorio (OBS*) is the property of OberCom and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In response to failures of central planning, the Chinese government has experimented not only with free-market trade zones, but with allowing non-profit foundations to operate in a decentralized fashion. A network study shows how these foundations have connected together by sharing board members, in a structural parallel to what is seen in corporations in the United States and Europe. This board interlocking leads to the emergence of an elite group with privileged network positions. While the presence of government officials on non-profit boards is widespread, government officials are much less common in a subgroup of foundations that control just over half of all revenue in the network. This subgroup, associated with business elites, not only enjoys higher levels of within-elite links, but even preferentially excludes government officials from the NGOs with higher degree. The emergence of this structurally autonomous sphere is associated with major political and social events in the state–society relationship. Cluster analysis reveals multiple internal components within this sphere that share similar levels of network influence. Rather than a core-periphery structure centered around government officials, the Chinese non-profit world appears to be a multipolar one of distinct elite groups, many of which achieve high levels of independence from direct government control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a drastic increase of migration from Libya towards Italy, the fatalities on this route increased, and members of the civil society founded search and rescue organisations to respond to the situation. The public discourse in Europe and Germany about migration and the role of search and rescue NGOs is heavily polarised. This research was aimed at understanding the causes for this polarisation by conducting a Qualitative Content Analysis of German national news articles. In the last years, the focus shifted from the necessity of a humanitarian response towards the necessity to secure the EU external borders. Search and rescue organisations have been framed as a threat to border security rather than as humanitarian actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important actors in the field of disaster management (DM) in natural disaster-prone countries such as Bangladesh, the spatial distribution of their activities and factors influencing their site selection are not well researched. Therefore, this research elucidated the spatial distribution of NGOs working in DM in Bangladesh for the past seven years with a geographic information system (GIS) and used logistic regression to analyze possible factors influencing their decisions on project locations. Based on our data, at the sub-municipal (i.e., union) administrative level, NGOs did not generally locate in disaster-affected or disaster-vulnerable areas; rather, they located in areas that were more accessible. Thus, we found a scarcity of NGO interventions in disaster-vulnerable areas, meaning that there is a scarcity of interventions for those who need support the most. Further, using the results from the regression modelling, we calculated the probability of each sub-municipal area being selected by NGOs for their activities, and revealed the socially disaster vulnerable areas where NGOs are less likely to intervene. Further, we superimposed the probability distribution on the hazard map, and identified both socially and physically disaster vulnerable areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Cuadernos de Información y Comunicación is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Teach for India (TFI) programme, an important offshoot of the Teach for All/Teach for America global education network, began as a public–private partnership in 2009 in poorly functioning municipal schools in Pune and Mumbai. Like its American counterpart, the programme in India has similar ideas of reform and recruits college graduates and young professionals to serve as teachers in under-resourced government schools and low-cost private schools as part of a two-year fellowship. Over the past 7 years, the organisation has expanded its reach to five other cities in the country—Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad—and is emerging as a focal point in a growing network of urban not-for-profit organisations seeking to infuse new logics of reform in municipal school administrative bodies. This article situates the emergence of the TFI programme in the Indian context and maps its links to local, national and global actors and organisations using Social Network Analysis (SNA). Through the use of SNA, the article highlights the growing network of non-state institutions in metro cities, most notably Mumbai and Delhi, which are playing a key role in school reform focusing on school management, school leadership, advocacy and teacher training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Relaciones: Estudios de Historia y Sociedad is the property of El Colegio de Michoacan, A.C. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper describes and interprets differences among social network structures in the private sector, politics (local administration) and nongovernmental organisations (NGO) in Croatia. Social network analysis (SNA) methodology was used to examine networks in three sectors, which were found to differ in terms of centrality measures and substructures. In the private sector network, centrality values of network members were related to their respective positions in the organisational hierarchy. In the politics network, centrality measures values of members were influenced both by hierarchy and by the number of same-party members. In the NGO network, all members had high centrality values. Substructure sizes were low in the private sector and high in the NGO sector; in the politics network, they were dependent on the number of same-party members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese water bureaucracy increasingly utilises information and communications technology (ICT) in order to strengthen interaction with the population, which is severely affected by industrial pollution. Government webpages, mailboxes, and online interviews with officers have become prevalent tools for environmental governance, including information disclosure, and a virtual communication forum between the state and its citizens. The present study employs a mixed methods approach with a qualitative emphasis to explore the process of communication and interaction between government agencies and local residents in Dongying, Shandong Province. The results show that information disclosure of pollution data remains far from being transparent, despite the fact that the local government has implemented digital environmental governance, as encouraged by the central Chinese state. Internet technologies empower resource-poor environmental activists in Dongying to strengthen their social network and build communication with the authorities. The application of bureaucratic techniques, however, is key for them to enter the communication interface with government agencies in order to influence political decisions. Results suggest that local cadres tend to send mixed signals to activists and display wariness towards them. They also tend to take preventive measures to keep the situation under control when environmental disputes arise. The proposed communication interface approach sheds a clearer light on the complexity among the emergent ICTs, environmental activism, and digital governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the participatory communication is widely embraced by development agencies, few published studies critically examine how local NGOs interpret and implement the approach at the village level. This article analyses a Cambodian NGO’s attempts to engage grassroots involvement against key tenets of participatory communication for social change. The NGO’s ‘translation’ of the approach is shaped by layers of discourse and replete with paradoxes. Factors hampering fulfilment of the spirit of the participatory model include (1) a lack of deep conceptual understanding of participatory principles among the NGO staff; (2) development strategies supported by international NGOs that are detached from the local context and avoid broader structural issues; and (3) socio-cultural and political deterrents that exist in rural Cambodia. By revealing areas of incongruence between theory and practice and critically examining adaptation of participatory communication in the rural Cambodian context, this case study illuminates localised strategies required for sustainable development and the recurring need for critical analysis of international-development discourse. The author concludes that in order to bring about emancipatory outcomes through rural development, local NGOs and their international partners need to commit to addressing social justice and inequalities as part of the participatory approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Canadian Journal of Development Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cahiers des Amériques Latines is the property of Institut des Hautes Etudes de l'Amerique Latine and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)