Political engagement has an established body of research. However, one key area that has not been investigated in the field is the relationship between political engagement and type of community lived in. This study explores this relationship between type of community, past political engagement, perceptions of community leaders, attitude about political engagement, and socieodemographic characteristics. A conceptual model was developed based on existing literature. Utilizing a statewide survey conducted in 2009 that yielded 1,154 respondents with a response rate of 30.2% was used to explore these relationships. Using statistical procedures that test correlation were utilized to investigate the relationship between the key study variables. In addition, a regression model was created to be able to predict an individual’s political engagement. The result concluded that type of community does not significantly play a role in determining an individual’s political engagement. However other insights were revealed that showcase the complexity of political engagement and raise other questions about the role an individual’s attitude towards political engagement, and perception of community leaders affects their political engagement.

Common knowledge dictates that cynicism and mistrust of politics is rampant among US citizens, wreaking havoc on participation in the American political process. Social Capital theories are commonly used to effectively explain US political behavior, but fail to account for alienation from the political process or the influence of peers. I argue that models of political participation would be improved by the inclusion of political alienation variables, which have fallen into disuse in recent decades. Using data from the US Citizenship, Involvement, and Democracy Survey (2006), this paper relies upon negative binomial regression with nested models to compare the explanatory power of social capital variables with models including political alienation and peer influence variables to assess the value of such concepts. Results indicate that while the parent variables of political alienation (powerlessness, meaninglessness, and mistrust of political institutions) improve model accuracy and influence political participation, the latent variable remains ambiguously useful. Powerlessness and mistrust revealed significant effects, but mistrust failed to fit into the latent concept of political alienation, and meaninglessness did not produce significant results. Peer influence only significantly affected political participation when participants specifically discussed political matters with peers. Implications and concepts for future research follow.

Research investigating women-owned businesses has developed considerably over the past two decades. There are, however, few British studies that have specifically focussed on growth oriented women-owned businesses. The current study aims to fill this gap. Its purpose is to explore the effect of social capital and human capital on the growth of women-owned enterprises in the UK. The research contributes to the knowledge of women's entrepreneurship as the first to study the moderating role of human capital in building and using social capital in the UK. It develops the theoretical premise that women entrepreneurs with higher human capital gain credibility and centrality in networks, accumulating social capital based on their importance for other network members and their business stakeholders. This mixed method study involves both collecting and analysing quantitative and qualitative data. Statistical analysis using SPSS was applied to analyse quantitative data collected through 517 on-line completed questionnaires from three different regions. The qualitative data collected through face to face interviews with 42 women entrepreneurs were also analysed and interpreted. The findings suggest that the social capital possessed by women entrepreneurs plays an important role in the growth of enterprises. Women entrepreneurs use different sources to build and use their social capital at different stages of growth and in different industry sectors such as manufacturing or services. Women entrepreneurs with higher human capital are more likely to identify opportunities, generate ideas and show creative thinking in introducing novel products, services, location, processes or systems, which makes their growth path exponential. There are implications of this study for women entrepreneurs to build and use their social and human capital for the growth of their enterprises. And there are also implications for politicians and business organisations, who must devise policies to develop opportunities for existing or potential women entrepreneurs for building their human based capital.

The increasing globalisation of the market is followed by increased competition between organisations. Therefore it becomes more important to create products with high customer value. To be able to create customer value, deep understanding of the customers’ needs must be obtained by employees, shared between them and transformed into products. Further consequences of globalisation are increasing differences between customers’ needs, which results in demand for customisable and flexible products.The purpose of this study was to analyse how organisations can create more customer value through increased knowledge integration. The focus was on how knowledge that already resides within a globally dispersed organisation can be integrated during the product development process.This study showed that customer value is created throughout the product development process by integrating the knowledge held by R&D and internal stakeholders. Different types of value are created at different phases in the product development process. One important finding is that different parts of the augmented value are created throughout the entire product development process. Since employees obtain different knowledge depending on which customer they interact with, it is important to utilise knowledge from a large number of employees with different roles and in different countries. Hence, the significance of knowledge integration must be disseminated and understood across the organisation. After completing the product development process additional customer value is created by the internal stakeholders’ who sell and implement the product, but it is during the product development process that the basis for their value creation is established.Knowledge needs to be integrated in a formalised, repeatable way, so that the R&D department can ensure that the right product is developed at the right time. Integration means that the tacit knowledge that resides within one employee is codified into an explicit form that can be exploited by more employees. Therefore, four steps must be performed and repeated iteratively to create and spread knowledge throughout the organisation. The first step includes communication by exchanging tacit knowledge. The second step entails documenting the knowledge, and the third step involves combining the knowledge residing in the organisations into one common knowledge system. The final step includes distributing the knowledge so that it recievess wide attention within the organisation. Several factors that have a negative impact on these four steps, and knowledge integration, need to be countered somehow. However, it was found that there are several mechanisms that facilitate knowledge integration, and most often the presence of several mechanisms at the same time had a better effect.

Health security is increasingly being seen as integral to any poverty reduction strategy. Health is viewed not only as an end in itself but also as an indispensable input into the development process because there is a positive link between health and development. Of all the risks facing poor households, health risks probably pose the greatest threat to their lives and livelihoods. Against this background, this research examines the vital subject of participation in mutual health insurance as a poverty reduction strategy at the rural community level. It has been accepted that community-based initiatives play important roles in improving poor people s risk-sharing arrangements. The extent to which these community-based initiatives are able to address the problem of social exclusion in local communities is far from being clear. / Masters in Public Administration - MPA

This research examines the relationship between community festivals and social capital across time and place. Social capital includes the social networks, norms, and trust that enable groups of individuals to cooperate in pursuing shared objectives, and benefits accrue to both the individual and the community. Research shows the ancient Greek and American Indian civilizations relied on festivals for a variety of purposes relating to social capital, including the bridging of social divides, the transmission of cultural heritage, and the reinforcement of community identity. Today, research findings from five small town festivals in Indiana indicate a similar relationship with social capital. Festivals can bring a community together, offer a shared experience for a diverse group of people, build new relationships, and foster community pride and identity. As such, community festivals may serve as a tool for community planners in building or sustaining social capital in a community. / Department of Urban Planning

Youth require opportunities to master and demonstrate new skills, make independent choices, and form positive social relationships to encourage positive youth development. Camps provide a unique setting that fosters the development of new sources of social capital and social support. Current literature examining positive youth development in camps has been able to identify some demographic differences in camper experiences at camp, but has not yielded statistically significant relationships and no consensus as to the explanations for those relationships. Using a longitudinal dataset gathered in a camp setting, this study examined the relationships between gender and age and personal development. Social capital and social support were found to have significant roles as mediating variables in the development of personal development at camp. This study enhances the understanding of the benefits to children from attending camp, and why females and older children may benefit the most from these experiences.

After the North American wave of “welfare reform” in the 1990s, much research has measured the success of the work-to-welfare model. Lone mothers as a group have proved a particularly intractable challenge to policies aimed at moving welfare recipients into the labour market and financial independence. The present dissertation focuses on lone mother welfare recipients and explores the processes they live as they receive and attempt to leave social assistance. This research adds to current scholarship by identifying factors that promote or frustrate the process of exiting social assistance, and by examining the effectiveness of policies and programs aimed at integrating these welfare recipients into the labour market. Concentrating on the welfare regime in Ontario, this dissertation explores the experiences of a diverse sample of thirty lone mothers participating in Ontario Works, the provincially-mandated work-to-welfare program. Each lone mother was interviewed annually for a series of four interviews. Focus groups with caseworkers provided insight into the lone mothers’ processes of attempting to leave social assistance, highlighting the differences between program design and program delivery. The dissertation asks three overarching research questions: What is the role of the provincial welfare regime in transitioning lone mothers from receipt of social assistance to paid employment? How did the lone mothers’ lives change over the study period? What elements facilitated exiting social assistance and what elements acted as obstacles or barriers? The research and analysis are shaped by three theoretical lenses; gender, social exclusion and social capital. The results highlight that there is no predictive factor: no profile emerged of the lone mother most likely to achieve independence. The research identifies “stayers”, “leavers” and three additional groups: “blenders”, “traders”, and “betweeners,” and establishes that while many exit the welfare stream, few did so because of financial independence. These results point to substantial inadequacies in the provincial work-to-welfare programming in addressing the particular needs of lone mothers. Gender neutral policies proved to overlook the key aspects to lone mothers’ experiences, such as their caregiving responsibilities and the realities of a labour market that stratifies based on gender. Lone mothers were effectively excluded from programs designed to increase bridging and linking social capital; such programs are only available to recipients who have succeeded in eliminating their barriers to joining the labour market. Bonding social capital, which is not targeted by Ontario Works and which depends on the personal resources of each woman, emerges as the key determinant of success in exiting, as it allows the lone mothers to overcome the caregiving challenge. The research also indicates that those without bonding social capital are those most likely to be socially excluded from multiple social realms.

This dissertation examines the adaptation of Christian refugees from Southern Sudan—primarily Dinkas and mostly educated—to living in Ottawa, Canada, not historically a gateway immigrant city. The discussion is based on sustained observation, documentation and analysis of South Sudanese refugees between 2005 and 2009, including 32 recorded interviews of adults, as well as a focus group held with young adults. It examines the findings through the lenses of social capital, with its focus on trust and reciprocity, and segmented assimilation to study the South Sudanese refugees’ integration through their most important groupings: ethnic, gendered, racial and religious. The study also focuses on the cultural, gender and language dynamics of a nascent South Sudanese-focused congregation and a related East African congregation. The experiences of Anglican and Catholic congregations with Christian Sudanese refugees were also examined. The research suggests that inter-culturally competent ethnic and religious leadership is central to the ability of migrant groups in the Global North to have enough bonding social capital to mediate the adaptation process and to bridge or link to other groups. First-wave, mostly male, educated refugees often have the inter-cultural skills and agency to set up effective organizations, but a continued focus on their region of origin, facilitated by the Internet and cell phones, makes a sustained emphasis on organizational-supported living in Canada difficult. While the values of many Sudanese-born women and their children converge with those of mainstream Canadian society, men living within patriarchal value systems, supported by literal interpretations of Holy Scriptures, face challenges, and the resulting conflicts threaten family cohesion. Both the denominational and the ethnic churches, in supporting new migrants spiritually and socially, are caught between denominational parameters and goals of ethnic identity, culture and values maintenance, made more difficult by the Sudanese not having a common language. The dissertation also begins to analyze the impact for recent African Christian immigrants of a culture that emphasizes individual rights, including the effects of the increasing presence of openly gay leaders in the Canadian but not in the African Church. / Cette dissertation se penche sur l’adaptation des réfugiés chrétiens originaires du Sud du Soudan, en majorité d’ethnie Dinka et scolarisés, vivant à Ottawa, Canada. Les résultats de la recherche sur 5 ans suggèrent qu’une gestion adéquate des dynamiques ethniques et religieuses au niveau interculturel est capitale dans la capacité des groupes de migrants dans les pays développés pour générer suffisamment de capital social et faciliter le processus d’adaptation pour se lier à d’autres groupes. Les églises confessionnelles et les églises ethniques, en aidant les immigrants spirituellement et socialement, sont coincées entre des paramètres confessionnels et des objectifs d’identification ethnique, de maintien de valeurs et de culture, compliqués par l’absence d’une langue commune parmi les Soudanais. Cette dissertation tente aussi d’analyser l’impact pour les immigrants africains de fraîche date, d’une culture qui valorise les droits individuels, y compris l’émergence de chefs de file ouvertement homosexuels dans les églises canadiennes mais non dans les églises africaines. / University of Ottawa

Conceptualizations of social cohesion, social support, and social capital are often Overlapping. This thesis aims to clarify and operationalize the term social cohesion, and empirically test the mediating effects of social cohesion on the income and health relationship. First, the inequality/social cohesion treatise postulated by Wilkinson (1996) is deconstructed and its limitations extrapolated. Second, relevant literature is drawn upon to create a social cohesion model that is inclusive of both social capital and social support variables. Third, multiple regression statistical analyses is performed using survey data administered to randomly selected middle-aged residents (N=918) of Victoria, British Columbia. It is argued that past research concerning social capital has been hastily conducted and erroneous conclusions have been drawn concerning social capital as a social determinant of health. This research vindicates the hypothesis that a critical re-examination of the social determinants of health literature is necessary.