Research Assistants (Ar) - Management (Prof. Lang, Richard) Bolzano

Research Assistants (Ar) - Management (Prof. Lang, Richard)
Bolzano
Trentino Alto Adige, Bolzano

Research Assistants (AR) - Management (Prof. Lang, Richard) The Free University of Bozen/Bolzano was founded on 31 October 1997 as a multilingual, internationally oriented institution.

Deadline for sending applications and publications: 18. 12. 2024 at 12:00 PM (noon)

Description of the research activity: The Social Economy (SE) sector constitutes over 10% of all EU enterprises, sustaining around 13. 6 million job positions. Despite its significant role, Social Economy Organizations (SEOs) face substantial policy and legal challenges, including funding shortfalls and difficulties in scaling, underscoring the need for thorough investigation. While often acknowledged as innovative contributors to social inclusion, some criticize them for allegedly advancing a neoliberal agenda. Controversies persist, primarily due to challenges in measuring the social impact of SEOs and discerning their outcomes compared to mainstream social inclusion providers. To delve into this discussion, there is a pressing need to enhance evaluation tools for measuring the impact of SE on social inclusion.

Although various approaches exist, they are primarily linked to improved accountability and external evaluation guidelines, commonly overlooking local needs and specificities. Concurrently, transnational reports indicate that SE employees, on average, receive lower compensation, experience more precarious jobs, and face informal working conditions. Therefore, there is an urgent need to broaden the scope of social impact assessment beyond service beneficiaries, incorporating the impact on SE employees. In this context, technological advancements hold the potential to support SE progression, with platform cooperatives emerging as influential contributors committed to citizen involvement and improving members' working conditions through collaborative governance.

Against these backdrops, the Horizon Europe project ASSETS employs a four-step strategy to explore SE's impact on social inclusion, quality job provision, and sustainability: conducting research and case studies spanning regions both within and outside the European Union, improving evaluation tools through local integration and technological advancements, and creating a digital collaborative platform to engage stakeholders and enhance working conditions within SE.

This position entails full involvement in the project's research activities:

Regional examination of political, regulatory, and labour conditions in the SE sectors across the EU; Conducting a case study addressing housing issues in Bolzano (incl. participatory observations, interviews, workshops, and document analysis, among others); Preparing research results for scientific and practice-oriented publications; Dissemination of research findings. These activities will be conducted independently and in collaboration with members of the Competence Centre, national and international research partners and central stakeholders of the cooperative sector in South Tyrol.

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