Determinant Factors of Social Innovation Capability in Nonprofit Organizations and Social Businesses

Abstract

The ability to create alternatives to social problems in a sustainable way can be understood as social innovation. Social innovation is a way of equalizing social problems, being considered an option for market, state and society failures. Thus, social innovation presents itself as a possible and necessary alternative for solving the problems related to Sustainable Development, especially education. This study seeks, from the perspective of the Innovation Capability, to identify the Capability for social innovation in Associations, Businesses Foundations and Social Businesses that work in the area of Education in the Southeast of Brazil. In this research, the Social Innovation Capability is composed of five factors, namely: Facilitating Leadership; Strategic Intention to Innovate Socially; Democratic Management; Co-creation of Social Innovation and Open Social Innovation. The research methodology is qualitative descriptive. For the data collection, an online questionnaire was sent to a selection of organizations belonging to all three types of organizations studied (Associations, Businesses Foundations and Social Businesses) that work in the area of Education in the Southeast of Brazil. As results, the responses of eight organizations, each with three respondents, were analyzed. The organizations were identified as being three Associations, two Businesses Foundations and three Social Businesses. The results were analyzed in light of the social innovation literature. The results indicate that in the Associations, Businesses Foundations and in Social Businesses, the determinants factors of the Capability for social innovation Democratic Management and Open Social Innovation are highlighted. Among the results it is worth noting that the Co-creation factor of Social Innovation is not representative for the organizations studied.

The Emergence of Innovation Capability During Firms’ Early Stage: Cases from Indonesian Creative Social Enterprise

“…Resources include materials, humans, and technology. Because of these constraints, SOCIC usually is built based on the principle of collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders defined by other scholar as open social innovation [29].…”

“…Literatures have discussed several styles of leadership for social enterprise: ethical leadership, transformational leadership, empowering leadership, facilitating leadership and participatory leadership [29,36,37]. Ethical leadership is characterized by trustworthy leaders who serve as ethical role models and enforce clear standards for ethical behavior among followers while also living an ethical personal life.…”

“…In addition for sustainable firms, knowledge also comes from co-creation [29]. It is defined as the collaborative process of creating and developing innovation while also empowering the community [47].…”

“…According to De Benedicto et al [29] to do social innovation it requires facilitating leadership style. A leader who can act democratically and help the team look outside of their own interests to prioritize the needs of society.…”

Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Non-Substitutable of Resources in Building Innovation Capability for Sustainable Development: Evidence from Creative Social Enterprises

“…In this paper, IC is defined as the ability to manage and integrate multiple key resources and capabilities to continuously transform knowledge and ideas into new products, processes, and procedures that benefit multiple stakeholders as well as the environment [2]. The capability to innovate is the key to finding solutions to environmental and societal issues [12][13][14][15], as one of contribution of study for innovation creativities.…”