Keystone sector methodology:network analysis comparative study



REAL


Keystone sector methodology applied to Portugal
decisive role in locality restructuring, differentiating community ability to adopt
competitive strategies. This suggests the need for alternative approaches, which
complement economic impact analyze.

As social network analysis is a methodology focused on interaction among
actors who, embedded in their specific social contacts, can play a leading role to
accomplish the development goals in a community. The whole town is then the
observation unity in this analysis and the outcome is different from looking at the sum
of individual behaviors.

In this paper we tested the hypothesis of the keystone sector and the change in
the social structure of a small traditional industrial town located in a European rural
underdeveloped region. Due to its export base tradition, it was expected to find few
internal contacts density. Nevertheless, it was unpredictable which were the more
prominent actors while from the last two decades we knew that industry lost its share in
the city employment structure.

No keystone sector was found, which contradicts the US evidence. Although
structural holes are present, the prominence indicators reveal that it is improbable that
best-located actors can really benefit for information and control to ameliorate
competition. It was expected to find an institutional network structure based on the
dictatorship public sector more than in private organizations and no dominating private
sectors. In fact, the prominent players mostly belong to the public and non-profit
sectors and the only relevant private firms belong to construction and insurance sectors
revealing the real estate dynamics connected with developer benefits provided by the
main public institutions. The margin over 25% of redundant contacts ask for more
further research focused on the content of the analyzed flows.

Conclusions

The benefits of regional policies have many public goods aspects and so far
private oriented incentives are not successful in dealing with them. The urbanization
process in small towns located in rural areas is contradictory; these need more people
but there are not too many people to attract. In addition, to sustain their role as
providers of upgraded services to the region, these towns need more well educated
people that, in general, are more likely to appreciate a new package of goods,
composed by amenities, unspoiled natural environment and social capital, avoiding the

22



More intriguing information

1. Examining Variations of Prominent Features in Genre Classification
2. An Investigation of transience upon mothers of primary-aged children and their school
3. The name is absent
4. Dendritic Inhibition Enhances Neural Coding Properties
5. The name is absent
6. The name is absent
7. Review of “From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the Social and Historical Evolution of Economic Theory”
8. Comparative study of hatching rates of African catfish (Clarias gariepinus Burchell 1822) eggs on different substrates
9. The name is absent
10. The name is absent
11. Growth and Technological Leadership in US Industries: A Spatial Econometric Analysis at the State Level, 1963-1997
12. Labour Market Institutions and the Personal Distribution of Income in the OECD
13. The name is absent
14. A Brief Introduction to the Guidance Theory of Representation
15. Sector Switching: An Unexplored Dimension of Firm Dynamics in Developing Countries
16. Citizenship
17. Apprenticeships in the UK: from the industrial-relation via market-led and social inclusion models
18. Constrained School Choice
19. The name is absent
20. Economic Evaluation of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), CHERE Working Paper 2007/6