Eugenia Rosca and Cheng-Yong Xiao receive grant for the NWA route ‘towards resilient societies’

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a grant of € 300,000 to Eugenia Rosca, Cheng-Yong Xiao and 3 colleagues from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). The researchers received the grant for their research projects on inclusion and resilience in organizations and the Dutch society as a whole. Their proposal from the NWA route ‘towards resilient societies’ consists of three sub-projects which all address inclusion and resilience from different angles.

Eugenia Rosca and Cheng-Yong Xiao, who are both assistant professor within the department of Operations (OPERA) of the Faculty of Economics and Business, will receive €100,000 to study the power relations, organizational logics and the overcoming of divergent interests in the collaboration between social enterprises (promoting the social justice goals of vulnerable groups) and commercial organizations. In another sub-project, Tara Fiorito (VU) will focus on effective strategies, interventions and collaborations geared towards the societal inclusion of undocumented youth and the role of their (the youth’s) narratives, experiences, and subjectivities in processes of socio-political inclusion. In the third sub-project, Lianne Cremers and Cato Janssen (VU) will focus on institutional resilience and organisational trauma and healing in nursing homes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. Collectively, the subprojects cover three different societal domains: education, labor and aftercare.

Novel forms of inter-organizational collaborations

In the upcoming two years, Rosca and Xiao will investigate novel forms of inter-organizational collaborations between social enterprises and commercial firms and how such collaborations can lead to a more inclusive workforce and hence society. The assistant professors will study the institutional and inter-organizational barriers, and explore effective enablers for the adaptive, collaborative, and inclusive capacities of the enterprises involved. They aim to do so by exploring several highly relevant questions grouped around the main stages of collaborations between social enterprises and commercial firms.

Rosca and Xiao are excited to collaborate with social enterprises and their colleagues from VU in this multidisciplinary project. Xiao: “I look forward to engaging with local, ambitious social enterprises through this project.” Rosca: “What is really unique about this project is that we have the opportunity to learn from each other what inclusion entails in very different contexts and bring those insights into our own research on inclusion facilitated by social enterprises.”

Questions? Please contact Eugenia Rosca or Cheng-Yong Xiao.