Sustainability Of Social Systems Research Articles

What We Have Learned about the Characteristics and Differences of Disaster Information Behavior in Social Media—A Case Study of the 7.20 Henan Heavy Rain Flood Disaster

As a significant human behavior, disaster information behavior may operate as a catalyst for affecting the evolution of disaster occurrences in social-ecological systems and the sustainability of social systems. Yet little research has been carried out on this subject, particularly on the information behavior of major natural disasters. Based on the case of the 7.20 Henan heavy rain flood disaster, this study constructs an information behavior composite index from the four dimensions of temporal, spatial, content, and behavioral agents and statistically identifies and quantifies the characteristics and differences of disaster information behavior in social media. The results are as follows. (1) Disaster information behaviors have an obvious life cycle with three phases, essentially following the “formation-development-extinction” process; disaster areas, near-disaster areas, and economically and technologically developed areas exhibit higher levels of information behavior. (2) A total of 47% of the content is related to the case, while 53% is unrelated; the most related microblogs (43.88%) were about “Disaster response/relief”. (3) Females (54.19%) engage in more information behavior than males (45.81%) and they also exhibit more positive behavior; the 20–29-year-old age group is dominated by positive and neutral comments with the highest level of information behavior, whereas the lowest level of information behavior occurs in the 50+ age group; neutral and irrelevant comments in the 30–49-year-old age group dominated. This case study enables a scientific understanding of the necessity of information dissemination for disaster prevention and mitigation and further demonstrates the hazard, psychological distance, societal, and individual factors that all affect how disaster information behaves and performs differently.

Structural Equation Modeling of the Correlation Between Social Capital and the Professional Ethics of the Specialists of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Background: Although ethics is essential to every occupation, it is even more crucial in the professions of the healthcare sector as the spiritual and responsible behavior of these employees toward patients plays a pivotal role in improving and restoring their health. Social capital is a significant determinant of the level of professional ethics. The organizations that respect social norms and principles could create a platform of trust and mutual communication between individuals to contribute to professional ethics promotion. Objectives: The present study aimed to model the structural equation of the correlation between social capital and the professional ethics of the specialists of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Methods: This study was conducted in all the hospitals in Shiraz, Iran (n = 33) in 2019. Cluster sampling was applied to select 10% of the hospitals as the research population, and several general practitioners and specialists (n = 200) completed the questionnaires for data collection. In addition, data on social capital were collected using the social capital questionnaire (2012), and the field data regarding the professional ethics of the physicians and medical specialists were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire. Results: The mean scores of the social capital and professional ethics of the participants were higher than cut-off points. In addition, the final model of the study indicated that the professional ethics of the practitioners could be predicted by their perceptions of social capital. Conclusions: Social capital is an important criterion of the survival of every system and organization, including medical organizations. Given the importance of social capital in the growth, success, and sustainability of social systems, administrators and health officials must develop basic infrastructure and an atmosphere of trust, security, and loyalty through the improvement of ethics among medical staff, especially among physicians and medical specialists.

Sustainable overall social transformation as a way of progress.

The paper concerns the fundamental issues of the sustainable social progress. As follows from the argumentation, a realistic design of institutional changes in connection with resource and organizational changes needed for sustainable progress is called for to realize in the line of overall social system transformation. This approach presupposes an exhaustive study of interconnected transformations in the main societal fields as system processes considering the influence of relatively exogenous factors (technological, demographic and climate changes). In turn, it is advisable, taking in view current world challenges, to expose an idea of ​​universal sustainability, the property of which is inherent in all social practices, and not just mediating the relationship between society and its environment. The first result of study concludes in revealing the fundamentals of overall social system sustainability. The second result: the transition to sustainable transformation of society supposes the synergetic implementation of structure-forming system and policy-driven shifts.

Sustainable Progress – The Achievable Result of Overall Social System Transformation

The paper concerns the fundamental issues of the sustainable social progress. As follows from the argumentation, a realistic design of institutional changes in connection with resource and organizational changes needed for sustainable progress is called for to realize in the line of overall social system transformation. This approach presupposes an exhaustive study of interconnected transformations in the main societal fields as system processes considering the influence of relatively exogenous factors (technological, demographic and climate changes). In turn, it is advisable, taking in view current world challenges, to expose an idea of universal sustainability, the property of which is inherent in all social practices, and not just mediating the relationship between society and its environment.The first result of study concludes in revealing the fundamentals of overall social system sustainability. The second result: the transition to sustainable transformation of society supposes the synergetic implementation of structure-forming system and policy-driven shifts.

Autopoiesis and Structuration Theory: A Framework to Investigate the Contribution of a Development Project to a Rural Community

The social application of autopoiesis remains a topic of interest and debate. In the 40 years since the theory of autopoiesis was published, Luhmann's work dominated its social application. Other suggestions of combining autopoiesis with social theory, such as Giddens' structuration theory, have gone largely unnoticed. In the present study, structuration theory is combined with autopoiesis concepts in a framework with which to assess the well‐being and sustainability of social systems in a developing country. In particular, the framework is applied to evaluate the contribution of a development project to the community affected by it. The study demonstrates the practical applicability of a structuration‐based conceptualisation of autopoiesis. In addition, it presents a novel way of looking at developmental impact, namely in terms of a project's influence on the self‐producing ability of the community served. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Nonprofit organizations, institutional economics, and systems thinking

The present paper applies the logic of John Kenneth Gailbraith's institutional economics analysis of corporate power to inquiring into the societal role of the nonprofit sector. Building on Galbraith's insight that corporations cause subtle but pervasive societal imbalances, the paper locates the role of nonprofit organizations in compensating for these imbalances, thus showing corporations and nonprofit organizations to be mutually complementary rather than antagonistic actors. This argument is supported by Niklas Luhmann's vision of the precarious relationship between the complexity and sustainability of social systems as well as by Kenneth Boulding's analysis of the farmer and labor movement. Luhmann's and Boulding's perspectives show profit-seeking corporations to be social systems developing high technological complexity at the cost of sacrificing their societal sustainability, while the improvement of the latter constitutes the rationale of many nonprofit organizations. The same systems-theoretic logic suggests, however, that nonprofit organizations may tend to underestimate the technological complexity of implementing their mission-related activities, thereby undermining their own effectiveness.

Sustainability of Social Systems by Suppleness

This white paper proposes that one of the next grand challenges in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences is to understand mechanisms of how dynamic meta‐states of a complex system may be sustained through continual adaptive changes, or “suppleness,” and to investigate how one could implement such mechanisms in our social, economical and political systems to achieve or enhance their sustainability. The idea of sustainability by suppleness is foundational because it is fundamentally different from existing ideas of sustainability by robustness or resilience. It is also transformative because it may provide novel perspectives to many of today’s socio‐economical and socio‐ecological problems that call for new strategies to cope with inevitable environmental changes.

Doing better by doing good – the experience of a community network in Brazil

The aim of this article is to comprehend the sustainability of social system by means of an exploratory study of a Brazilian community network. A number of internal and external members of this network were interviewed in order to identify the gains accruing to each member from their individual participation in the network. Two categories of analysis were selected: gains for the community and gains for the individual. It was noted that doing good 'does you good', a fact which is of decisive importance to the sustainability of social system especially when it is carried out by volunteers.

Conservation of Boreal Birds and the Case for Resilience: Does it Pass the Test?

Schmiegelow, F. K. A., and M.-A. Villard. 2009. Conservation of boreal birds and the case for resilience: does it pass the test?. Avian Conservation and Ecology - Écologie et conservation des oiseaux 4(1): 4.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ACE-00311-040104