Relevance of social capital in the face of unemployment in university students generated by the COVID-19 pandemic

Based on the acknowledgment that the ability in Colombia to use and generate social capital is quite deficient at the national level according to official measurements carried out in the country, the central theme of this article focuses on analyzing whether social capital is relevant to the phenomenon of unemployment in middle and low income university students generated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study deals with a sample of 392 students of the Universidad ECCI in Bogota, mainly middle and low income, who from the completion of a semi-structured survey designed with four dimensions at social, emotional, economic, and associativity levels, show that the use of formal and informal networks in young people has some level of impact on job placement in a discreet way, due to the low capacity of recognition of network linkage, as well as the complexity of access to networks that potentiate solidarity and support in times of juncture such as the one we are living, ignoring the potential impact of social capital on development.

Economic reactivation of the productive sector of Cañar, Ecuador: theoretical construct in the COVID-19 scenario

This article is a response to the need for economic reactivation because of the crisis resulting from the context of COVID-19. The purpose of the research was to elaborate a theoretical construct through the application of Confirmatory Factor Analysis that gathers observable variables around dimensions or factors. The study begins with a review of the literature that approximates the causal relationship of the phenomenon. The research has a quantitative approach with exploratory, descriptive and correlational designs. The following factors such as associativity, sustainable tourism, competitive advantage, market orientation, digital inclusion, agricultural innovation and knowledge transfer were found and they are linked with the economic reactivation. The Confirmatory Factorial Analysis was used in this study which helped to reduce from 117 to 47 items in the measurement instrument for the research of economic reactivation in the province of Cañar in Ecuador with factor loadings higher than 0.6. As a conclusion, it is said that it is possible to study the phenomenon with a validated questionnaire on the bivariate association of the researching variables. © 2022, Universidad del Zulia. All rights reserved.