Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 1 2 Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SOCIO- ECONOMIC ISSUES (JRSEI) Journal of Regional & Socio-Economic Issues (Print) ISSN 2049-1395 Journal of Regional & Socio-Economic Issues (Online) ISSN 2049-1409 Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 3 JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SOCIO- ECONOMIC ISSUES (JRSEI) ISSN No. 2049-1395 Aims of the Journal: Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues (JRSEI) is an international multidisciplinary refereed journal the purpose of which is to present papers manuscripts linked to all aspects of regional socio-economic and business and related issues. The journal welcomes all points of view and perspectives and encourages original research or applied study in any of the areas of regional socio-economic and business. The views expressed in this journal are the personal views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of JRSEI journal. The journal invites contributions from both academic and industry scholars. Electronic submissions are highly encouraged (mail to: [email protected]). Chief-Editor Assoc. Prof. Dr. George M. Korres: Visiting Fellow University of Newcastle, Centre of Urban Regional & Development Studies, (CURDS) and also Associate Professor University of the Aegean, School of Social Sciences, Department of Geography, [email protected], [email protected] Editorial Board (alphabetical order) Prof. Dr. Elias G. Carayannis: Professor School of Business, George Washington University, Washington, USA, [email protected], [email protected] Prof. Dr. Hanna Dudek: Professor Warsaw University of Life Sciences, [email protected] Assoc. Prof. Dr. George Gkantzias: Associate Professor in Cultural Management, New Technology University of the Aegean, [email protected] Dr. Aikaterini Kokkinou: University of Glasgow, Department of Economics United Kingdom, [email protected] Prof. Dr. Elias A. Kourliouros: Professor University of the Aegean, School of Social Sciences, Department of Geography, [email protected], [email protected] Assoc. Prof. Dr. Charalambos Louca: Associate Professor & Head of Business Department , Director of Research Department, [email protected] Prof. Dr. Photis Nanopoulos: Former Director of Eurostat, [email protected] Dr. Pablo Ruiz-Nápoles:Faculty of Economics, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, [email protected] Prof. Dr. Kiran Prasad, Professor Sri Padmavati Mahila University [email protected]; [email protected] Professor Paris Tsartas, Rector, University of the Aegean, E-mail: [email protected] Assoc. Prof. Dr. George O. Tsobanoglou: Visiting Fellow University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Centre of Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) & President, International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Socio-technics & Sociological Practice (ISA-RC26) Assoc. Prof. University of the Aegean, , [email protected] Prof. Dr. George Zestos: Professor of Finance, Christopher Newport University, [email protected] 4 Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 Table of Contents Editorial Board 2 Table of Contents 3 Paper 1: Local Development and Collaborative Planning: A Theoretical 5 Framework of Analysis (by Elias Kourliouros) Paper 2: The Mineral Wealth and Island Development (by Constantinos 27 Panagopoulos) Paper 3: Application of Lean and JIT Principles in Supply Chain 39 Management (by Chandan Deep Singh, Rajdeep Singh, Sukhvir Singh) Paper 4: Sustainable Management issues in protected insular areas: The case 57 of the Port-Cros National Park (France) (by Spyros Anagnostou) Paper 5: The Riparian History of the Ganges Commands the History of 67 Rulers: A Study of Malda District of West Bengal, India (by Showkat Iqbal) Book Review 84 Call for Papers 85 Instructions to Authors 86 Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 5 6 Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 Local Development and Collaborative Planning: A Theoretical Framework of Analysis Abstract: The failure of centralized regulatory and planning policies to offer viable solutions to acute socioeconomic and spatial development problems, as well as the broader deregulation of welfare state and the advent of neo-liberal hegemony in the developed capitalist countries, have led theoretical and policy discussions to issues of local endogenous development and collaborative planning. This paper examines these issues in a broader theoretical context, at first place, with specific references to concrete policy cases. These issues have been for long at the core of scientific discourse in the fields of economic geography, regional science and planning theory. In this paper we hope to offer a fresh approach to local development and collaborative planning based upon a critical reflection on existing theoretical models. Key-words: Local endogenous development, territory, planning, participation Elias Kourliouros1 1Corresponding Address: Professor Dr. Elias Kurliouros, Department of Geography, University of the Aegean. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 7 1. Introductory Remarks Before embarking upon local development and collaborative planning issues, it is necessary to clarify in brief the relations between economic growth and economic development. In spite of the fact that these terms have been broadly discussed in economic literature, there are still commentators and journalists that tend to treat them as identical, obscuring therefore their fundamental differences. More precisely, economic growth refers to quantitative temporal increases of various macro-economic indices of a country or region, such as per capita GDP, fixed capital investment, employment, incomes, consumption, exports and the like. On the other hand, economic development refers not only to quantitative, but also to qualitative aspects of social and economic processes –aspects related to the improvement of the quality of life of the area’s population (Thirlwall 2001, Bowles & Edwards 1996, Kindleberger & Herrick 1982). These qualitative aspects refer to: (a) education, health and social welfare, (b) culture and leisure, (c) housing quality, conditions of the natural and built environment, (d) political empowerment and democratic participation of citizens in public issues, (e) citizens’ sense of security, (f) equity and social cohesion, (g) free access of all citizens to information, public goods and services, and (h) countering of social exclusion and other kinds of inequality based on income differences, gender, race or skin color. In other words economic development is not simply the increase of material wealth of a society, but mostly its “reconstruction” on the basis of higher cultural values; hence the notion of economic development should be conceptualized as identical to that of social and cultural development. Complex indices, such as the Human Development Index (HDI), for example, have replaced the old qualitative ones as more appropriate for an integrated approach to national development issues as well as for comparing the different countries and regions. Some scholars remark that economic development must fulfill the following interrelated goals (Thirlwall 2001): (a) Life-sustenance: This goal is fulfilled when development provides all necessary means for covering the population’s basic needs such as shelter, clothing, food, health and education. 8 Journal of Regional Socio-Economic Issues, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013 (b) Self-esteem: This goal is fulfilled when the country’s or region’s citizens maintain a sense of self-respect, which, in turn, depends on the construction of an egalitarian regime in both their mutual relations and their relations with other countries or regions. (c) Freedom: This goal is fulfilled when the emancipation of society from the tree evils (need, ignorance, misery) makes citizens free and capable of making their own decisions. Another group of approaches during the mid 1980s focuses upon the concept of sustainable development. This concept was coined in the so called “Brundtland report” (WCED 1984), according which sustainable development is the kind of development that satisfies the needs of the present generation, without undermining the possibility of future generations to satisfy their own needs. An important point that has to be stressed from the outset, is that an integrated approach to economic development should take into account its inherent spatial dimensions. As Massey (1984) puts it, the social and economic processes cannot take place just “on the head of a pin”, but in concrete territorial scales ranging from the global to the national and regional/local scales, which affect, in turn, the process of development itself. Spread across geographical space and mediated through concrete spatial forms, economic development is therefore expressed geographically as spatial (or territorial) development. This notion includes changes in the spatial distribution of populations and activities, their mutual relations and the ways in which these are expressed in concrete physical forms (e.g. land use, settlement system, technical and social infrastructure, environmental protection zones, and so forth). The notion of development leads to a brief examination of the notion of development