Title: Technologies and Innovations in Regional Development: The European Union and its Strategies
Authors: Borut Rončević (Volume editor)Victor Cepoi (Volume editor)
The subsequent volume revolves around the Social-Fields-Approach (SOFIA) as an approach to conceptualization and operationalisation for the purpose of empirical research. It contributes a new perspective and approach to research on innovation.
We believe that SOFIA can have implications for both academic research and practical applications in reshaping the existing instruments and governance arrangements in innovation policy. Whilst applying SOFIA, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative, quantitative and mixed-method approaches in innovation studies, including less conventional methods, such as QCA (Ragin,
2008). Diligent application of SOFIA can also subsequently lead to the development of high-level theoretical contributions.
Title: Social capital: recent debates and research trends
Authors: Frane Adam, Borut Rončević
The aim of this article is not only to provide an overview of the state of recent discussion about the concept of social capital, it is also an attempt at the critical reflection on theoretical and empirical research efforts. The question is whether the concept of social capital is a fashionable (and short-lived) term proposed as a cure-all for the maladies affecting contemporary communities, organizations and societies as a whole or whether it has more long-term strategic - theoretical as well as applicable - meaning for sociology and other social social-science disciplines. Despite the deficiencies of the recent research findings, we argue that the latter is true.
Title: Is Europe 2020 set to fail? the cultural political economy of the EU grand strategies
Authors: Matej Makarovič, Janez Šušteršič, Borut Rončević
The European Union (EU) has been continuously rethinking its global position amidst emerging economic and geopolitical challenges and attempting to formulate strategies to increase its competitiveness. However, its long-standing policy implementation deficit is also recognized for its grand strategies, including the initially ambitious Lisbon Strategy. Is Europe 2020 set to fail as well? In this paper, we are arguing that strategic steering is essentially a discursive practice influenced by both semiotic and extra-semiotic factors. Hence, success or failure of a strategy essentially depends on ability to steer the discourse. Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory offers a theoretical framework against which limitations and potentials of strategic steering at the EU level can be analysed. While high levels of rationality and reflection capacities can improve strategic steering, it is limited by the increasing complexity.
Title: Information society and its manifestations: economy, politics, culture.
Authors: Matej Makarovič, Janez Šušteršič, Borut Rončević
The book provides a compilation of idiosyncratic manifestations of information society in techno-economic, political and cultural spheres. The contributors focus on the increasing complexity within information societies. To manage this complexity, societies develop constantly evolving context-specific modes of meta-governance. The contributions allow a better understanding of well-known conceptualizations and definitions of information society and related concepts such as post-industrial society, post-modernity, as well as a network society, and knowledge society.
Title: Go with the flow: high-performance computing and innovations in the Danube region
Authors: Borut Rončević, Raluca Coscodaru, Urška Fric
The book is a product of the InnoHPC project, financially supported by the Danube Transnational Programme (2014-2020).