ACToR_UU will have a significant impact wider than the selected target localities. The deliverables and outcomes of the project will contribute in our understanding of un-under-employment patterns, their causes and their multiple interconnections with sustainable local development. The wealth of information and data from the project’s WPs guarantees that the project consortium will have detailed enough data at its disposal, so as to attempt to perform in depth study and comparisons of the findings at the local, regional and national level; most importantly, these data will be operationalised to inform practice thus reducing the gap between research/theory and practice on the ground. The impact of project will be assessed in terms of the following main areas:
- Impacts in relation to research area of unemployment and non-voluntary employment patterns and the ways these are affected by intersection of industries/production sectors and regional labour markets
- Impacts in relation to the research area of bottom up approaches to sustainable local development.
- Impact on un-under-employed themselves in Sparta and Tripoli.
- Impact in relation to local stakeholders in Sparta and Tripoli.
- Impact on local policy makers
The results of ACToR_UU, in particular the results of the WP 1 and 2, will provide geographically-sensitive and sectorialy-diversified accounts of the very reasons of the underutilization of the un/underemployed. Moreover, the project will provide a sufficient opportunity to establish a network in order to promote cooperation, integration and staff exchanges among the participating institutions. Additionally, the programmed activities, such as seminars, will contribute to the establishment of new collaborations which will improve the level of international cooperation in the future.
Thus, student and faculty exchanges between Greek partners and the Norwegian Institution are a fundamental goal to be achieved during the project and soon after it will be finished. Future publishing plans in high impact journals will also be established as an extension of the publishing and the dissemination activities conducted during the project. Additionally, the innovative element of ACToR_UU is that results will immediately become operational as an empowerment tool for the un/underemployed and key local stakeholders (action researchers) who will participate in “action groups” in Sparta and Tripoli (WP3).
Action researchers will inform their practices with the input of scientific research (WPs 1 and 2) and transform this knowledge into action, promoting both organisational and individual learning. The action plans they will produce will include concrete, collective and innovative ways (practices and mechanisms) to effectively address the problem of the underutilization of the unemployed, as a common problem. These action plans will be based on smart specialisation strategies which will make good use of the existing human capital and the comparative advantages in target localities, improving connections, internal (universities, business, social actors) and external (cooperation with other regions and innovation players). Thereby, ACToR_UU will provide an innovative good practice in the field of sustainable local development applicable in other localities in Greece and abroad.
The project aims to measure impact and outcomes, success, added value, improvement and transformation using well designed tools. Valuable and high quality results are the cornerstone for successful impact. Recognising this fact, the consortium puts emphasis on the process for ensuring the quality and value of the results to be created. The following main actions for impact creation are planned within the project:
– Quality assessment of the results: The Scientific Coordinator will monitor the output quality of the project’s deliverables and activities on a regular basis, while all partners will be continuously involved in the research and development process.
– Assessment of impact potential: To ensure a wider impact potential, the results will be periodically assessed by the project partners, under the dedicated and relevant work package. Moreover, elements of excellence of the project (Tools, techniques, methods and etc to be development for the purpose of the project) can be reused and replicated in other projects.
-Exploitation: An exploitation plan will be developed by the project team at the beginning of the project implementation. Furthermore, the exploitation of the results will start from the participatory action research component of the project.
– Dissemination: The dissemination strategy aims at reaching both academic as well as social stakeholders at the local, regional, national and EU level, interested in the project’s approach to address the problem of unemployment / underemployment and underutilization and waste of human resources. The information gathered and the knowledge gained through the project, can be made available to all interested organizations through a wide dissemination.
The project partners are fully committed to act to ensure the project can reach the highest level in terms of dissemination of the knowledge gained through the project. Various activities are planned in the project, namely through the administrative and technical management Tasks that have been incorporated in each WP as well as the Exploitation and Dissemination activities, in order to widely and efficiently disseminate the project information to any interested organizations/policy makers.
Tackling un/under-employment in an efficient and sustainable way is a central aspect of Greek and European good economic performance. Policy recommendations that will be derived from this project will be a significant outcome of the research. The research will also advance European Labour Geography and Participatory Action Research in an era where both fields are recognized as important disciplines worldwide. The following table summarizes the contributions on Greece’s and EU’s / EEA’s excellence and competitiveness that the project’s results are expected to make.