ABSTRACT
The term ‘community’ covers diverse entities with a variety of functions and kinds of authority – stretching from (i) villages, cities, subnational jurisdictions … to (ii) national, regional, and supranational groups. The interests and strategies of major protagonists in a business community are diverse. Communities are also diverse in many respects (with respect to their origins, structures, functions, resources, and other characteristics). They comprise people who bond together thanks to one or more critical factors. Notable among these factors, one could mention the following: shared historical background and collective memory; shared basic interests, creeds, values, aspirations, visions, and missions; common economic and political interests; a single ethnic and cultural patrimony; comparable habitat or lifestyle; unity within a solid institutional framework (e.g. that of a national or multinational state) that solidly binds together people; a durable willingness to live together in harmony and solidarity, and/or other binding forces or factors.
