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Agroecology, Service-Learning, and Social Responsibility: A Case Study for Spain

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Abstract

Service-Learning (SL) is one of the most innovative approaches in education. This method seeks to apply the theoretical knowledge learned in the classroom through services to the community. At the same time, the growing concern for more sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural production systems has brought this reality into the classroom. Therefore, at the university level, there are experiences of SL with an agroecological perspective channeled through internships in companies in master's degree programs. This article aims to analyze whether the participation of these companies in SL activities has been a positive or negative strategy and whether its management has been carried out in a controlled manner. The Balanced Scorecard methodology will be used for this purpose. The results obtained are heterogeneous, being particularly good in the “customers” factor, but reaching worse figures for the “Learning and Growth” factor.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by the Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria de la Xunta de Galicia through the predoctoral grant ED481A-2018/34, the postdoctoral grant ED481B2018/095 and the following grants: ED431C2018/48 and ED431E2018/07. In addition, this study has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under grant RTI2018-099225-B-100. The authors are also grateful for the valuable contributions made by Juan Carlos López Rodríguez.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Economics and Business, Department of Applied Economics, ERENEA-ECOBAS, Universidade de Vigo, Vigo, Spain

    Raquel Fernández-Gonzalez

  2. Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Universidade da Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

    Félix Puime-Guillén

  3. Faculty of Statistics, Cybernetics and Economic Informatics, Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

    Simona Andreea Apostu

  4. Department of Business, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

    Lucía Fernández-Rumbo

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  1. Raquel Fernández-Gonzalez
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  2. Félix Puime-Guillén
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  4. Lucía Fernández-Rumbo
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Correspondence to Raquel Fernández-Gonzalez .

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  1. Department of Management, School of Economics and Management, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    Carolina Machado

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    João Paulo Davim

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Fernández-Gonzalez, R., Puime-Guillén, F., Apostu, S.A., Fernández-Rumbo, L. (2023). Agroecology, Service-Learning, and Social Responsibility: A Case Study for Spain. In: Machado, C., Paulo Davim, J. (eds) Corporate Governance for Climate Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26277-7_8

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