Kaderisasi Keagamaan, Human Capital, dan Pembangunan Ekonomi Berbasis Kelembagaan: Studi Kasus PD-PKPNU di Kabupaten Garut

Abstract

Weak leadership regeneration has the potential to produce ideologically fragile cadres and generate economic costs through the weakening of social capital and disruption of local economic activities. This study aims to analyze how human capital optimization is designed through a tiered cadre development program (cadre by design), focusing on the Basic Education–Nahdlatul Ulama Activist Cadre Education (PD-PKPNU) program at the Nahdlatul Ulama Branch Management (PCNU) of Garut Regency. This study employs a qualitative approach with a single-case study design based on document analysis. The data corpus consists of PD-PKPNU organizational documents from 2023–2025, official NU media publications, and 15 selected journal articles published between 2022 and 2025. The data were analyzed using content analysis and thematic analysis through the lens of the POAC management functions (planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling), integrated with the values of religious moderation (wasathiyah). The findings indicate that, as documented, PD-PKPNU is designed to bridge the training-to-action gap through mandatory post-training Follow-Up Action Plans (Rencana Tindak Lanjut/RTL), which include community economic empowerment agendas. Meanwhile, the internalization of Aswaja values is positioned as a form of religious social capital that has the potential to reduce transaction costs in socio-economic cooperation and serve as a protective factor against radicalism. The study concludes that integrating professional institutional governance with religious moderation values can serve as a conceptual reference for other religious organizations in designing cadre development as a strategy for community economic development. The findings are qualitative and documentary in nature and have not yet quantitatively tested their economic impacts.