In recent years, the subsidiarity principle has been underlined in Sport-for-All policies in countries such as Germany, Austria and Belgium. According to this organising principle, issues need to be handled by the lowest possible political and administrative level, and as close to the citizens as possible. The 2007 decree concerning Sport-for-All policies at the local level in Flanders (Belgium) clearly referred to this. It emphasised the decentralisation of the Sport for All policy, and highlighted the regulatory and coordinating role of local sports authorities. As a consequence, they may face conflicting roles of being coordinator, regulator and provider of mass sport at the local level. In this paper, a mixed-method approach is used to give a closer insight in the role perceptions of local sports authorities in Flanders, and their position towards private sport providers. The results show that local sports authorities consider the coordination and regulation of mass sport in their municipality as their primary task. Yet, it appears that private sport providers also perceive competition from local sports authorities. Moreover, a considerable number of the local sports authorities believe they can combine the roles of provider and coordinator. As there appears to be considerable goal ambiguity, it is necessary for local sports authorities to formulate clear goals. Referring to the principle of subsidiarity, it is argued that sports authorities should only intervene when (non-)profit sport providers are not able to achieve the desirable outcomes with regard to sport and the welfare agenda.
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Western societies are quickly becoming less coherent (Giddens, 1991). As a result it is increasingly unclear how individuals should act in a range of situations or how they may understand themselves. To a certain extent this development towards more diverse perspectives and a broader range of ways to act is a positive one, as cultures can only develop as they are confronted with different perspectives. A uniform culture would simply reach a standstill. That said, current society now demands of its citizens that they become increasingly self-reliant and by extension develop a capacity to be self-governing. On the labour market self-reliance and self-determination have been considered par for the course even longer. It is no surprise then that terms like self-direction, self-governing teams, employability and resilience are considered part of the standard repertoire of politicians and employers (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2017). Within the social sciences, an ability to be self-governing and self-reliant are terms that are associated with the concept “agency”. However, the latter is a fairly vague, multidimensional concept (Arthur, 2014) that refers to the ‘scope of action’ an individual has in a fluid society (Bauman, 2000). In this article we would like to explore the concept of ‘agency’ further whereby we focus on the role of imagination in enacting it. https://doi.org/10.1177/1038416218777832 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
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Stakeholders and in particular customers are an important source for business model innovation. Especially for sustainable business models, stakeholder integration may radically change the business logic and help to revise the business model. In this process cognition plays a central role, challenging basic assumptions and changing the dominant logic. In this paper we explore how interactions with the network contribute to making a cognitive shift in development of a sustainable business model. We build on three cases and closely look at the commercialisation stage in which a change of cognition and redesign of the business model take place. Our findings show that network interaction changes the dominant logic in business model innovation in two ways: by triggering a cognitive shift and by contributing to business model redesign. Our main contribution is the conceptualization of three interrelated shaping processes: market approach shaping, product/service offering shaping and credibility shaping. They provide a fine-grained perspective on value creation through collaborative networks and add to the business model literature by providing a framework to study the role of networks and cognition in business model innovation. For practitioners the shaping processes may support business model redesign and building relationships to advance commercialisation of sustainability-oriented innovations.
Cities: Action-perspectives for a climate-proof, drought-resilient, and water-sensitive built environment Recurring droughts severely impacted the Dutch built Environment , causing financial, environmental, and social effects. Climate change and urban developments are expected to aggravate this. Although municipalities recognize drought as critical risk, few have prepared for it. This is due to a lack of understanding of the urban water balance under drought and the vulnerability of urban water use(r)s, ambiguity in role and responsibility, and missing action-perspectives. Thirsty Cities aims to address this by developing, collecting, connecting and delivering in a transdisciplinary approach the needed knowledge, insights, tooling, principles, designs, infrastructures and action-perspectives for a climate-proof, drought-resilient, and water-sensitive built environment.Dorstige Steden: Handelingsperspectieven voor een klimaatbestendige, droogteweerbare, en waterrobuuste bebouwde omgeving.De Nederlandse bebouwde omgeving is herhaaldelijk geraakt door droogte, met financiële, ecologische en maatschappelijke effecten. Klimaatverandering en stedelijke ontwikkelingen zullen het droogte-risico naar verwachting doen toenemen. Alhoewel overheden droogte als een risico erkennen, hebben weinigen zich daarop voorbereid. Gebrek aan inzicht in de stedelijke waterbalans onder droogte, de kwetsbaarheid van stedelijke watergebruikers, onduidelijkheid in rol en verantwoordelijkheid van betrokken actoren, en ontbrekende handelingsperspectieven liggen hieraan ten grondslag. ‘Dorstige Steden’ draagt middels trans-disciplinair onderzoek bij aan een klimaatbestendige, droogteweerbare, en waterrobuuste bebouwde omgeving door de benodigde kennis, inzichten, instrumentaria, principes en ontwerpen te ontwikkelen, verzamelen en verbinden en handelingsperspectieven te formuleren.
