Sports as Social Innovation for Social Inclusion

Author(s):  
Anne Bunde-Birouste ◽  
Alex Richmond ◽  
Lynn Kemp
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmelina Bevilacqua ◽  
Yapeng Ou ◽  
Pasquale Pizzimenti ◽  
Guglielmo Minervino

This paper investigates how public sector institutions change their form and approach to achieve a socially innovative urban governance. The “Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics” (MONUM) in Boston, Massachusetts (USA) proves a representative case of innovation in the public sector. As a new type of government agency, it is essentially an open innovation lab dedicated to innovative evidence-based policymaking. Following a new dynamic organizational pattern in urban governance, MONUM is conducive to project-oriented social innovation practices and horizontal multi-sectoral collaboration among the three societal sectors: public, private, and civil. Its results suggest that first, the peculiarity of MONUM lies in its hybrid and boundary-blurring nature. Second, new institutional forms that experiment with urban governance can rely on multi-sectoral collaboration. Third, MONUM has experimented with a systemic approach to social innovation following the “design thinking theory.” The MONUM case can contribute to the current debate in Europe on the need to harmonize EU policies for an effective social inclusion by promoting the application of the place-sensitive approach.


2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iva Konda ◽  
Jasmina Starc ◽  
Barbara Rodica

AbstractToday the world faces many social challenges in the economic, social and environmental spheres that needs to be overcome. The public debate has been focused on finding solutions to them and one of these has been addressed as social entrepreneurship. This phenomenon combines the resourcefulness of traditional entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. Observing the positive social impact of entrepreneurs providing basic needs, this paper recognizes their unique role in efficiently contributing to the achievement of sustainable development goals. The purpose of this article is to introduce the connection of social innovations and sustainable growth as an important phenomenon in today's real economy. Based on the interviews with the focus group and the cases of good practice, the authors have established the development of social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Slovenia. It is important in numerous fields, especially in employment, social inclusion, demographic changes, health care, education, finance, political structures and social integration. We found that the obstacle in the development of social entrepreneurship is scattered, unrelated or absent support mechanisms that do not offer the right incentives for the creation and the development of social enterprises. Another conclusion is that cooperation with partners from different sectors of the society is an important fundament in their work with social entrepreneurship.


2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 1550002 ◽  
Author(s):  
PANAGIOTA SERGAKI ◽  
MARIA PARTALIDOU ◽  
OLGA IAKOVIDOU

Very few women's co-operatives exist in Europe today; of those that do, the vast majority are involved in non-agricultural sectors. For the past thirty years in Greece, numerous women's agricultural co-operatives have been established in rural areas and scholars have articulated several aspects of their role in both women's life and the local development. A cursory glance at the history of the women's agricultural co-operatives in Greece and a review of the literature highlights the uniqueness of this type of entrepreneurship (a rarity in Europe) and their significant role for rural society cohesion, mainly in geographically and economically isolated rural areas. In this paper we employ a SWOT analysis to elaborate on strengths and weaknesses, which vary from co-operative to co-operative. Either bottom-up or top-down created women's co-operatives are currently a social innovation. Their strengths mainly concern economic independence and social inclusion of women in rural areas, while their weaknesses are mainly associated with funding, organization, administration, know how, culture, product promotion and marketing problems. Nevertheless, they are called upon to survive in a competitive environment; although difficult, it is one that provides opportunities that most likely can outweigh threats.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Elisa de Resende Alt ◽  
Heiko Spitzeck

Subject area Innovation and Intrapreneurship. Study level/applicability MSc, MBA and Executive Education Programmes. Case overview The case on Priscila Matta focuses on the role of social intrapreneurship and social inclusion at Natura, the largest cosmetics company in Brazil and a corporate responsibility leader. Centred in the complexity stemming from dealing with a local community which supplies key ingredients to the Ekos product line, the company's most prominent and innovative brand, it illustrates the difficulties of establishing inclusive forms of business with a traditional community in the northeast of Brazil. Ekos builds on the rich Brazilian biodiversity and traditional knowledge. Brazilian law requires Natura to share the benefits obtained from the access to genetic heritage and associated traditional knowledge with those communities who supply such resources. Implicitly, the case focuses on the role of the social intrapreneur – Priscila Matta – and how she navigated corporate politics to structure the company's community relations. The case demonstrates the difficulties of social intrapreneurs who aim to create sustainable innovations to execute shared value strategies. Expected learning outcomes The case has the following four learning objectives: to illustrate best practices in intrapreneurial activities that aim to create shared value – in this case, value for Natura and for the community; to define the role and characteristics of social intrapreneurs – people inside big corporations who drive sustainable innovation; to discuss obstacles the corporate environment presents in the process of social innovation; and to illustrate how individuals within companies can implement a shared value strategy. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8608
Author(s):  
Antonio Baselice ◽  
Maurizio Prosperi ◽  
Antonio Lopolito

Agriculture can be a possible provider of social services of relevant importance for the whole society. In order to generate a valuable social service, a multi-actor approach is often applied, based on an active collaboration among public institutions, non-profit organizations, and private firms, and capable of generating multiple positive impacts. This new approach may both favorite agricultural diversification and enhance the quality of life of rural communities. However, in order to enable policymakers in motivating the public support to these types of initiatives, an evaluation method capable of disentangling the multiple benefits generated by social agricultural projects is required. In this paper, we adapted the evaluation method previously developed by the SIMRA consortium for Social Innovation initiatives, to a project aimed at the employability of NEETs in the south of Italy. A selection grid, framed by cross-referencing the national policy objectives of social agriculture and the criteria of eligibility adopted in public calls is proposed, to choose the suitable indicators for the evaluation. The evaluation experience allowed the measurement of 34 indicators of performance. The results prove that 12 indicators are positive, while 12 are moderate, and 10 are low and are mainly related to the enhancement of social inclusion. The evaluation exercise may be useful to disentangling the multiple outcomes generated by initiatives based on social innovation, which are highly based on intangible assets, and exert a positive effect on the internal cohesion and the engagement of the civil society.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5202
Author(s):  
Adriana Perez-Encinas ◽  
Yolanda Bueno ◽  
Begoña Santos ◽  
Camila Nieto-Mejia

Social exclusion related to the unemployment of vulnerable population groups constitutes a crucial limitation to achieving a sustainable world. In particular, young and senior populations have specific characteristics that put them at risk of exclusion from the labor market. This circumstance has motivated an attempt to foster cooperation between these age groups to enable them to develop entrepreneurial initiatives that will contribute to close this social vulnerability gap. We approach this topic by focusing on intergenerational entrepreneurship, understood as entrepreneuring projects jointly undertaken by seniors and young adults. The objective of this study was to identify the differences and complementarities between senior and young entrepreneurs with a view to enabling them to develop viable intergenerational entrepreneurial projects, with special emphasis in the motivational push, pull, and blocking factors that affect them. This kind of entrepreneurial initiative fosters knowledge transfer and experience between age groups, promotes job creation and social inclusion, improves a sense of belonging, and, thus, contributes to the construction of a stronger society serving as an engine for sustainable development. Therefore, intergenerational entrepreneurship can be considered a form of social innovation. A mixed-methods approach was utilized in this study, using quantitative data from a questionnaire as a starting point for the characterization and identification of senior and young entrepreneurial profiles, and qualitative data from focus groups, which enabled us to identify complementarities among generations. The results show that there are significant differences between youths and seniors in terms of the motivations and factors that push, pull, or block the decision to form an intergenerational entrepreneurial partnership. These differences can be interpreted as complementarities that can boost intergenerational cooperation to promote social inclusion.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Slee

Though widely regarded as ill-defined and lacking conceptual clarity, social innovation has been heralded as a desirable response to social economic and environmental challenges arising from market and policy failures. Based on a definition of social innovation as involving the reconfiguration of social practices through civil society engagement, this paper offers an inductive classification of the diverse types of social innovation found in Scotland, based primarily on rural examples. It is argued that not only does social innovation occur in a diverse range of fields and in many different forms, but also that the Scottish Government policy has explicitly connected to social innovation as a means of delivering a communitarian policy agenda. However, without affirmative action, the community empowerment agenda is likely to widen the gap between communities with strong social capital and those with weaker social capital, thus undermining another strong strand of Scottish policy which supports greater equality and social inclusion.


Author(s):  
J. Corthouts ◽  
E. Thibaut ◽  
C. Breuer ◽  
S. Feiler ◽  
M. James ◽  
...  

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