Learning for Change: different actors in the new economy and possible levels of analysis

On 14th of September 2017, the session Challenging roles in the economy took place at BlueCity 010. The session discussed the difficulty social entrepreneurs and local initiatives face during collaboration, and the ways they can deal with it. Different actors and their different interests have also been looked into.

In the new economy, the matter of collaboration requires different actors interacting with each other. Amelie, the speaker, discussed the different actors with different characteristics (see figure 1). Three main actors - State, Community and Market - show different characteristics. Regarding public/private distinction, state stays in the realm of the public while community and market stays private sectors. In terms of formality, community is classified as informal while state and market are as formal. Lastly, the actors are distinguished according to non-profit/profit orientation. In this distinction, market stays as profit-oriented while state and community are not. The 4th sector of civil society is created in the joint of all three actors.

During the session, Amelie emphasised the fact that there is a misalignment of interests of different sectors. For example, the Impact Hub Rotterdam deals with a company money and needs to take the financial problem into their account. The community with which it works with mainly consists of volunteers and does not have to take care of the budget problem. As a result, the notion of ‘we’ and ‘they’ has been created within the same working block.

In order to discuss this problem, we had time to come up with the ideas on the question: “which conditions allow actors to value each other?” (see figure 2). My idea on this concerns the importance of different focus and different levels of analysis. If we were to look at problems from an individual level, that is community, market, and state, there will inevitably be conflicts over interests. However, if they develop a collective group identity, then we can look at the problem on a broader level which offers collective identity and interests. In this way, we further create the firm root of development in the new economy.