Social Innovation

Abstract

There is much rhetoric concerning the need for collaboration and partnership both from policy makers and those within the sector who see the social enterprise model as being more collaborative than the private sector. However, there is limited understanding of the processes by which trust is built up and maintained in these contexts. The chapter examines the relationships between commissioners and providers, users/beneficiaries/ customers (vertical relationships) and relationships between providers (horizontal relationships). The chapter will go beyond assumptions concerning how organisations are expected to behave, and will examine the economic and social institutional contexts in which their actions are embedded. In particular attention will be given to how organisations build relationships in 'quasi markets' and in an environment of emerging competition for the delivery of public services. These issues are explored by looking at the case of self employment support provision in the UK.

Studying the complexity of change: toward an analytical framework for understanding deliberate social-ecological transformations

“…Transition management and social movement scholarship indicates that actors can select an end point and govern the transitions toward that predetermined state (Tarrow 1998, Kemp andLoorbach 2006), recognizing the constraints of existing structural power imbalances. However, social innovation scholars contend that the course of the transformation will emerge from the interplay of agency and structure rather than be determined by either alone (Westley et al 2006, Nicholls andMurdock 2012). As such, actors do not control the course of a transformation; rather, they can only steer it somewhat toward their goals and influence the trajectory of the transformation process (Westley et al 2013).…”

Social bricolage and social business model in uncertain contexts: insights for the management of minor cultural heritage in Italy

“…All the interviews were tape-recorded and later transcribed verbatim, to focus on statements underlining the social dimension, the social innovation produced. Then, we linked issues and features emerged to the main elements of social innovation from the literature, the framework of social bricolage and social business model (Nicholls and Murdock, 2012; Hoogendoorn et al , 2010; Di Domenico et al , 2010). To respect the anonymity of our interviewees, their names and those of the SEOs have been allocated a code (as expressed in Table 1).…”

On the trail of local welfare innovations in rural Finland

“…In addition, the rapidly ageing population, the structural changes in agriculture, and the decrease of municipal tax revenues, partly caused by the two above mentioned developments, have made it difficult for many rural municipalities to sustain services they are legally responsible for (Hänninen & Silvasti, 2010). Along with the pressure on services, administrative reforms have led to the diminution of democratic decision-making processes and thus weakened the possibilities of rural residents' voices being heard (e.g., Häikiö, 2010;Matthies, Kattilakoski, & Rantamäki, 2011;Närhi & Kokkonen, 2014). The reforms include measures as reducing the number of municipalities to take advantage of the economies of scale, transferring the responsibility of providing public services from local authorities to autonomous regional organizations, rationalizing the processes of service delivery including introduction of e-services and self-services as well as contracting the provision of certain services out to private service providers (see Valtioneuvosto, 2018).…”