Social Clustering: Paradigm of Trust

I Modeling Social Economy and Social Clustering¹

1.1   Community-Based Social Industries for Creative Economy

Lithuania has smart human resources, which should be used to foster competitiveness. Lithuania’s economy has grown faster than most other OECD economies over the past 10 years, unemployment continues to fall and public finances have become stable after a long period of deficits and a rising debt.¹ Lithuania’s gross domestic product is €34.95 billion a year. That makes it the largest economy of the three Baltic states but just one-tenth of the size of Poland’s economy. Small it may be, but it has been growing fast: Lithuania’s economy has almost doubled in size since 2000.²

Smart specialization has become a key element of the Lithuania Strategy 2030,³ which lays down guidelines for the next decade in the development of regional innovation systems, consolidates a “smart-growth principles,” “green growth,” “inclusion increase” and cohesion policy. Smart specialization is a strategic approach to priorities in education and culture, sustainable social services based on tradition and religion as a key for sustainable growth and development in the society.

In this monograph, you will find information about Lithuanian social capital for smart and sustainable socioeducation networking for sustainable society. Social industries, organizations and companies, such as the ones working in universal design, social clustering, social advertising, secondary use of things, software or the gamification are normally seen as particularly innovative (Lazzeretti, L., 2012, Kvieskienė, G., Kvieska V., 2012). Cities and communities are important for social partnerships and social capital: social and creative ←31 | 32→industries tend to be urban industries, which take advantage of shared knowledge and of a density of specialized customers, suppliers and workers to create new products (Asheim, B. T., Ebersberger, B., & Herstad, S., 2012). Businesses benefit both from the diversity of urban environments, which may provide a range of stimulation, and from specialization, allowed by urban environments. Furthermore, the recent research states that externalities are related to the city size: larger cities provide greater externalities, making firms in large cities more innovative, more inclusive and friendlier for communities (Duranton and Puga, 2003; Stolarick and Florida, 2006, Targamadze 2016). The chapter argues that a greater use of social economics (SE) and social partnership (SP), including “public-private partnership” (PPP) and “social clustering” (SC) an innovative way for empowerment all social groups and stakeholders in communities, in private, public and civic sectors in terms of positive socialization and social welfare. In short, the use of smart education (SE), social communication and mediation (SCM) strategies and the PPP funded education model to complement (but not replace) other sources of funding education could help resolve some of budgetary capital constraints that have been observed and tangibly hampered educational productivity and performance. We have tried to explain the synergy between smart education and social innovations and analyze impacts of social partnership and social clustering on families and community welfare.

Since 1990, the population of Lithuania has shrunk by 23%, largely due to migration, with nearly 72% of emigrants aged between fifteen and forty-four. This has dramatically changed the county’s demographic structure and affected the socioeconomical sector in multiple ways. Although Lithuania’s economic growth has been impressive, social inequality is still very high; the risk of poverty is one of the highest among European countries, and life expectancy is comparatively low and strongly dependent on socioeconomic background, the sense of confidence and being a member of the community. Low salaries and poor job satisfaction adversely affect the well-being and contribute to the high emigration level. Proper coordination of the labor market and well-balanced social and health policies can all contribute to the improvement of both well-being and economic growth. Lithuania officially claims its priorities including support for social and small business initiatives to create more and better job opportunities, especially for low-skilled employees, and socially protected jobs for disabled people. Better access to state support, social inclusion and an adequate income level combined with support to job seekers and training programs would further facilitate integration of out-of-work ←32 | 33→individuals into the national labor market. Promotion of equity and effectiveness and sustainability of health policies are also instrumental to inclusiveness.

A wide-scale labor market, unemployment benefits and the pension reform grounded the New Social Model implemented in 2017, which is expected to reinvigorate inclusive growth and underpin the sustainability of public finances in Lithuania.⁴ In 2017, despite complex and frequently adverse conditions, improvements were noted in several dimensions of sustainability, and solid fundamentals were laid down for future improvements in several other sectors. Lithuania’s non-governmental organizations (NGO) have frequently expressed their intentions to more actively participate in public policies and government decision-making processes. For the first time, umbrella organizations received dedicated government funding and played an important role in advocating for change. In 2013, the European Council decided to start implementation of the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) to address the issue of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). Under this initiative, 20 EU member states, where the unemployment rate among 15–24-year-old people exceeded 25% in 2012, received EUR 6.4 billion for implementation of additional measures to reduce unemployment of young people by the year 2018. Lithuania was among the countries and received over EUR 69 million from YEI funds. Lithuania included the YEI into the Operational Program for the European Union Funds’ Investments in 2014–2020, where its implementation was assigned a specific objective to reduce the number of young people aged 15 to 29 not in employment, education or training set in Priority and Promoting Quality Employment and Participation in the Labor Market. The objective comprises two YEI-supported projects aimed to support 35,000 young people aged 15–29 who are not in employment, education or training until 2018.⁵

The importance of European cohesion policy is in designing multisectoral, multifunctional, multi-criteria educational, cultural and religious analysis of smart specialization as research and development (R&D) and innovation development priorities are tailored to cater personal, communal, regional, national sustainable development strategy or scenario, considering local resources, competitive advantage and environmental factors (Carlsberg, 2015, Foray, David, ←33 | 34→Hall, 2009; Kvieskiene, Kvieska, 2012; Kvieskiene, Celiesiene, 2014). After evaluating modern trends, it can be said that Lithuanian society can create a prosperity life. Success will depend on various factors: state policy and financial instruments, smart education and development strategies, investment and efficient management of public assets, multifunctional urban centers, universal design of residential areas and most importantly sustainable development of community participation and engagement. Sustainable development is an important community mobilization tool that develops positive leadership and community capacity, in which it is necessary to validate the local government and other laws (Kvieskiene G., Bardauskiene D., 2014). We define smart positive socialization as social innovation and creative industries synergy, which is based on a 3D model of education in enabling sustainable social communication, smart education, creative Industries and social capital (PPP: social partnership) (Celesiene E., Kvieskiene G., 2014). The creative industries concept emerged in Australia in the early 1990s, but it was given much wider exposure by policy makers in the United Kingdom in the late 1990s, when the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) set up its creative industries unit and task force. In the process, the DCMS moved the understanding of the concept of creativity a long way from its common association with activities having a strong artistic component to any activity producing symbolic products with a heavy reliance on intellectual property and created for a wide audience. Emphasizing the key role of intellectual property has classified creative industries into four broad sub-sectors where the copyright, patents, trademarks and design structure are the final product. Social industries are a diverse set of industries, defined as smart education (project managing; gamification and social advertising); sustainable community-based urbanism; sharing and circular economy, secondary use of things⁶; art and antique markets; designer fashion; video, film, and photography; music and the performing and visual arts; publishing; software, computer games, and electronic publishing; radio and television; craft and design.

Totally integrated education (TIE),⁷ outreach, experimental education: learning by doing and problem-solving theories predict that learners will better acquire knowledge and skills, strengthen their social emotional health ←34 | 35→and resilience if teachers are not alone in learning from the local community resources, explode the socioecological environment and human resources. These theories are based on the theoretical studies of John Dewey, Davide Kolb, Howard Barrows, Ivan Ijich, Maria Montessori, Gary Marx, Bodo van Calsberg, Elizabeth Steiner and John Patrick. Institutions and organizations in the public, private and civic sectors in communities are important for the education of children, but their resources are episodic and underutilized. Smart education processes, educational innovations, social and creative industries emerge in both urban and rural community organizations when leaders of these innovations emerge: entrepreneurs who initiate, facilitate and coordinate this process. Public schools rarely come back to change established educational traditions, and even more so to choose other educational spaces. However, as the experience of the most innovative schools shows, sometimes even remodeling the school space can become an innovative success story. The goal of the school is for children to understand the challenges of real life, to experience the inspirational, supportive and challenging power of not only family and school but the whole socioecological environment and its inspiring magic and potential for development. Learning has long surpassed class and school. Smart education transcends school walls, teaches children to trust in themselves, develops their resilience to life’s challenges and teaches them how to find appropriate examples for improvement. The school needs to involve its social partners in the education process so that children can learn from the best, discover a sincere, respectful and trusting relationship with other people, trust their uniqueness and understand their responsibility for development as the basis for the next phase of life. Cities and communities are important for these relationships: social and creative industries tend to be urban industries, which take advantage of shared knowledge and of a density of specialized customers, suppliers and workers to create new products (Asheim, B. T., Ebersberger, B., & Herstad, S., 2012). Businesses benefit both from the diversity of urban environments, which may provide a range of stimulation and from the specialization, allowed by the urban environments. Furthermore, recent research states that such externalities will be related to city size: larger cities provide greater externalities, making firms in large cities more innovative (Duranton and Puga, 2003; Stolarick and Florida, 2006, Targamadze 2016). Globally, creative industries are estimated to account for more than 7% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) (World Bank 2003) and are forecast to grow on average by 10 % yearly (PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2003). Already these industries represent a leading sector in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) economies, showing annual growth rates of 5 to 20 per cent ←35 | 36→(EESC 2003). In the United Kingdom, for example, creative industries already generate revenues of over £110 billion and employ 1.3 million people (UK Dept. for Culture, Media and Sports 2003). Several other developed countries, such as Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Sweden, have also been successful in exploiting their foothold in these industries and are increasingly seeing them as a gateway to the new information economy (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Distr., 2004). Going toward a sustainable, community-based development highlights a several key elements reflecting the positive impact of 3D/3M: