New Players on Crowded Playing Fields: The Institutional Embeddedness of Social Innovation in Germany

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Ruddat ◽  
Anna-Lena Schönauer

This article1 analyses whether and how social innovations can be implemented in a Conservative/Bismarckian welfare regime and society such as Germany. It examines the transferability and the relevance of this discourse and practice, and argues that, due to existing institutional structures and cultures, innovation by public sector intrapreneurship is more significant in Germany than through social entrepreneurship. The article challenges the assumption that social innovation emerges from entrepreneurship, and questions the level of attention and importance attached to this development

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 5378
Author(s):  
Alfonso Unceta ◽  
Igone Guerra ◽  
Xabier Barandiaran

In the last two decades, social innovation (SI) and social entrepreneurship (SE) have gained relevance and interest within the framework of academia at international level. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are key players in promoting innovation and social entrepreneurship initiatives that respond to multifaceted challenges. They support strategies on the basis of the strengthening of participation, collaboration, and cooperation with society and its local communities. However, the approach of Latin American universities to SI and SE has been very uneven in the way they have understood them, integrated them into academic programmes, and transferred knowledge to society. On the basis of the experience of the Students4Change project, we sought to understand the role of Latin American HEIs in promoting social innovations by analysing the experiences of 10 participating universities to formalise a pedagogical programme on SI and SE in their institutions. The results suggest that there is still a need to formalise an academic syllabus that is specifically designed to promote social innovations and to train universities in this endeavour. This paper contributes to the identification of the main levers of change, strengths, and challenges that Latin American universities face to institutionalise SI and SE in their contexts.


In this paper, we address the research question of to what extent is it possible to discern theories of change being built into the business practices of nascent social enterprises in ways that lay foundations for the subsequent upscaling of their social innovations? We argue that social enterprises that are ‘ready-to-upscale’ are those that clearly produce a solution to an underlying problem, and where their activities are clearly derived from the underlying problem, and also those activities clearly connect forward to deliver consistent solutions. We apply a Theories of Change approach to the concept of social entrepreneurship as a means of setting a criterion for ‘ready-to-upscale’, studying six Sri Lankan micro-social enterprises in which we can trace stories of impact. This provides a means to develop a model of the ways that social entrepreneurship creates the foundations for structural changes that reduce systematic inequalities, and offers social enterprise funders a framework to better stimulate emergence of social enterprises ready-to-upscale and deliver social innovation.


Author(s):  
Juraj Nemec ◽  
Beáta Mikušová Meričková ◽  
Mária Murray Svidroňová ◽  
Daniel Klimovský

This chapter examines social innovations in the public sector emphasizing the plural forms of ownership in public service provision which enable co-creation. It identifies different types of co-creation as social innovations, as well as the drivers for, and barriers to, successful co-creation processes at the subnational level in Slovakia. This study is a part of the research project “Learning from innovation in public sector environments” (LIPSE) and as such focuses on co-creation in the fields of welfare and the environment. One of the findings is that co-creation innovations are predominantly proposed and initiated by other actors, rather than by local self-governments, contrary to the main role that local governments are believed to play in initiating the co-creation processes. Explanations for such situations are provided.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malin Gawell

Purpose – Sweden, and many other countries, has, during the twentieth century, developed a rather large public sector providing social welfare services to citizens. Only to a small extent were private for- or nonprofit organizations providing these services. During the last decade we have seen a shift towards more services being provided by private for- and nonprofit actors. This shift means that roles are reconsidered, renegotiated and reconstructed. In this debate social entrepreneurship, social enterprises and innovation are emphasized. The aim of this paper is to problematize and analyze how social entrepreneurship and social enterprises relate to public sector management and governance. Design/methodology/approach – In the paper theories on (social) entrepreneurship and innovation is combined with theories focusing on welfare structures. Empirically, the analysis is based on the current policy development in Sweden and five social entrepreneurship initiatives. Findings – The analysis discloses the relationship between the public sector and social entrepreneurship as negotiation of emerging social enterprise markets in which aspects as the creation of value, dependencies and innovation are emphasized. Even if the study has a geographical focus both theoretical contributions and implications for policy and practice can be of use also in other contexts. Originality/value – Through combining social entrepreneurship with welfare services and public management this empirically based study contributes both to problematize and align the emerging field of social innovation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Wanjiku Kaime-Atterhög ◽  
Yvonne von Friedrichs

Subject area Social entrepreneurship/innovation. Study level/applicability Basic to advanced level. Case overview This case introduces students to the context of social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Societies are facing new challenges that will require innovative solutions. In our society, social needs are addressed in a variety of different ways. Some of these needs are addressed mainly through public organizations, some in private spheres through associations or businesses, and others in informal organizations or maybe not at all. As changes occur in our society, the current practices we use to meet our needs will not necessarily be the same practices we use to meet our needs in the future. In response, a number of initiatives are emerging. This case describes the process of such a new initiative. Expected learning outcomes Students need to understand what social innovation is; in how many ways it manifests; and why it is a multi-disciplinary field. Students need to understand the difference between for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and which challenges they are effective in addressing (context dependency). Students need to understand, describe and discuss the process and methods of developing social entrepreneurship and social innovations using the House of Plenty Social Innovation Model as a case. Students need to understand and discuss the main challenges that not-for-profit social innovations face in securing financial sustainability and in scaling up using the House of Plenty Social Innovation Model as a case. 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. Subject code CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-371
Author(s):  
Heiko Berner

Social innovations are targeted measures that are capable to resolve social problems (Rammert 2010) and they are directed towards an improvement of the situation (Gillwald 2000). Finally, they are directed towards an amelioration of the situation (Gillwald 2000). In Austria it is argued that ethnic business represents a type of social innovation (Haberfellner 2000). The question the paper addresses is if and to what extent ethnic business goes hand in hand with social developments and possibly boosts social change. Entrepreneurs of Turkish origin in Salzburg are the focus of analysis. The paper starts with a definition of the term ‚social innovation‘ (1), the issues of ethnic vs. migrant business (2.), followed by the description of the labour market situation of Turkish migrants in Salzburg and discrimination in the labour market (3.), and, to to round up, the analysis of biographic interviews with Turkish entrepreneurs in Salzburg (4.). The preliminary results show that there exist social problems such as the lower socio-economic situation of Turkish migrants in Salzburg and discrimination in the labour market. These problems can be seen as basis for the need of social innovations. But nevertheless Turkish run ethnic businesses in a strict sense of the word are no social innovation because they do not act against the problems in an intended way; they rather work on their own account. They may overcome disadvantages on the labour market but their actions are not directed towards overcoming the problem per se. It is much rather a transintentional aspect (Schimank 2010), which goes beyond the economic interest of the actors.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bechir Fridhi

AbstractThis article aims to understand the extent to which social entrepreneurship (SE) contributes to the construction of a collective dimension linked to social innovation (SI). We aim to propose new ideas that can deliver insights into the SE phenomenon. This research is also distinct from entrepreneurial ecosystems as its development already requires some successful entrepreneurial action and to do it, the structuring and consolidation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem constitutes a real challenge for the development of SI.This work has been based on a participant observation of eight major events dedicated to social entrepreneurship or the shared economy. In-depth interviews with Tunisian social entrepreneurs were also conducted in order to enrich our corpus. The results show the necessary cooperation of social entrepreneurs for a sustainable and responsible social innovation. Indeed, the analysis emphasizes that the viability and sustainability of a social innovation rests essentially on a collective construction, beyond common social values.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7532
Author(s):  
Giuseppina Maria Cardella ◽  
Brizeida Raquel Hernández-Sánchez ◽  
Alcides Almeida Monteiro ◽  
José Carlos Sánchez-García

Social entrepreneurship (SE) is an emerging research field that has received much scholarly attention in recent years. Given the global scope of this attention, this review explores the existing scientific literature on social entrepreneurship to contribute to a systematization of the research field. Based on the publications in Web of Science and Scopus, a total of 1425 scientific articles were analyzed. We used the bibliometric method to describe the evolution of social entrepreneurship research (e.g., evaluation by years, authors, scientific journal articles, and countries in the SE literature that have had the greatest impact in terms of production). In addition, we used the mapping of knowledge networks through the citations and co-citations analysis to identify schools of thought. A keyword co-occurrence analysis was performed to detect key research topics over the years. The results show that, although the research is still in a nascent phase, it has a multidisciplinary character. Furthermore, social entrepreneurship appears to be a concept closely linked to three schools of thought: commercial entrepreneurship, sustainable entrepreneurship, and social innovation. The keywords analysis allowed us to isolate the constructs that the literature has considered antecedents (e.g., socio-psychological factors) and accelerators (e.g., education, network, culture, and gender) to the development of social entrepreneurial intention. We will further discuss the ways researchers can explore this research field and contribute to the global literature.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 891-900
Author(s):  
Iban Lizarralde ◽  
Audrey Abi Akle ◽  
Mikhail Hamwi ◽  
Basma Samir

AbstractCurrent development of renewable energy systems (RES) is characterised by an increasing participation of citizens in the upstream decision-making process. These citizens can be future users of the RES but also members of a Renewable Energy Community that develop RES. They can be at the same time Renewable Energy producer, investor and consumer. Moreover, several type of businesses and terms are used to cope with social innovations within the energy sector: local renewable projects, sustainable energy communities or community of renewable energy production. So, actors' engagement opens new solutions for designers who are induced to share alternatives before making decisions. They usually impose constraints since the early phases of the design process. This approach implies for designers to consider new criteria related to citizens motivations and barriers. This paper presents a study to define the main factors that drive people to contribute in social innovation schemes for clean-energy transition. After a state of the art, a survey about 6 main factors and 18 criteria is presented. The analysis based on the responses from 34 participants (i.e. experts) reveals 2 most important factors of motivation and 2 principal barrier sources.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document