A Model to Promote Sustainable Social Change Based on the Scaling up of a High-Impact Technical Innovation

Why does the progress of civilisation require social innovations?

The Amazon rainforest has an iconic position in the global conservation movement: not only is it the largest continuous tropical rainforest in the world, but it also encapsulates many of the greatest challenges facing twentieth century conservation. However, while deforestation and its potential impact on global climate systems (Malhi et al. 2008) grab most of the headlines, it is easy to forget that Amazonia is also home to a large and diverse human population (Ribeiro and Fabre 2003). In addition to the remaining indigenous tribes, there are many settlements and scattered communities of fishermen and farmers of mixed ethnic origins. The support and active engagement of these communities in conservation and sustainable resource management is essential for the success of any conservation or sustainable development initiative. Unfortunately, numerous studies have demonstrated that implementation of co-management or community-based management of natural resources is far more difficult to achieve than the abundant rhetoric that promotes it. Moreover, each failed initiative makes it harder to establish the levels of trust and cooperation that are essential ingredients of successful management systems. Even without the handicap of previous failed initiatives, successful community-led management of natural resources is exceedingly complicated and there are many potential barriers to its successful implementation (Brockington et al. 2008): Conflicts over resource use—especially issues such as fishing rights—may prove intractable problems for which mutually satisfactory resolution may not be possible. In this context, participation of local stakeholders may merely give a platform for the legitimization of vested interests in the guise of community aspirations (Cooke and Kothari 2001). Existing or historic political, cultural or administrative structures may not have the flexibility to enable effective local community involvement, and may even result in disempowerment by forcing local stakeholders to interact within an intrinsically biased framework (Cooke and Kothari 2001). There may be insufficient political will to facilitate a move toward participatory management, especially if there are many and competing vested-interests involved. There may be insufficient interest or engagement of the local stakeholder community in the management of the resource to create strong and democratic local organizations. If the participatory process is perceived as being externally imposed and local stakeholders do not fully “buy-in” to it, then the process may break down when the initiative finishes or when financial support is withdrawn. Insufficient time may be allocated for the creation of local organizations and stakeholder groups and/or refinement of the participatory process. As a consequence of these limitations, well-meaning attempts at promoting co-management of natural resources have often increased, rather than decreased, social conflict (Waters 2006) leading some researchers to argue that there is a “need for much more complex and empirical approaches for doing conservation with local communities” (Brockington et al. 2008, p. 110). Brockington and his colleagues go on to suggest that a “more open-ended, empirical approach is much more likely to help us find approaches that are effective, equitable and more in line with local needs and values” (p. 111). In this research synopsis, we describe one such open-ended empirical approach to community-based natural resource management, developed over an 8-year initiative in a rainforest community in Amazonas State, Brazil. The conceptual basis of the approach, dubbed sustainable open systems/SOS (Ribeiro and Fabre 2003), was to gather detailed information on the cosmography (environmental knowledge, ideologies, and identities collectively developed and historically located) that the community uses to establish and to maintain its territory, and use this as the basis for sustainable management and formal resource use agreements. The term ‘open systems’ was chosen to reflect the inevitable flux of people and resources in and out of the management area or system. To better illustrate the SOS approach we present data from one of our case studies that took place in the Manacapuru district of Amazonas State, Brazil. The inhabitants of this district are broadly representative of the non-tribal peoples of Amazonia, being composed of individuals of mixed descent with different degrees of historical and cultural affiliation with the surrounding rainforest. Most families engage in productive activities that are common in inhabitants of the Amazon floodplain such as fishing, collecting and small scale agriculture (Furtado 1993a, 1993b). An eight year project was initiated in 1998 by the multidisciplinary PYRA research group (Integrated Program of Aquatic Resources and Floodplains) with the aim of designing a co-management system for local fisheries that was clearly aligned with local customs and practices and which would provide a robust framework for the development of sustainable practices.

Lake Sentani, one of the largest lakes in Papua, plays a vital role as a provider of life for the local community but is threatened by human activities. The eco-theology approach emphasizes the moral relationship between humans and nature as a divine mandate. The research method is qualitative and descriptive, with data collected through in-depth interviews with local stakeholders, authorities, and religious figures. Secondary data from previous research and relevant scientific publications are also used. The research findings indicate that maintaining the balance between humans, the lake, and its ecosystem is crucial for the sustainability of Lake Sentani. The local community holds a decisive view of the lake, considering it as “phuyakha phu reai wali” or the lake is my life. This perspective reflects a deep moral connection with the natural environment and their moral responsibility to care for it. Conservation efforts include biodiversity studies, increasing public awareness, and sustainable management. In conclusion, preserving Lake Sentani is not only an ecological issue but also has a strong spiritual dimension. The eco-theological approach highlights the moral responsibility of humans to care for nature as a divine trust. To maintain ecological balance and the well-being of the local community, conservation efforts involving local communities and relevant stakeholders are essential to ensure the lake's sustainability as a source of life.

Social Innovation Promoting Policy and its Implementation in the European Union

This paper introduces the conceptual framework and intervention model of Our Healthy Community (OHC), a new, coordinated, and integrated approach towards health promotion and disease prevention in municipalities. The model is inspired by systems-based approaches and employs a supersetting approach for engaging stakeholders across sectors in the development and implementation of interventions to increase health and well-being among citizens. The conceptual model includes a combination of a bottom-up approach emphasizing involvement of citizens and other community-based stakeholders combined with a top-down approach emphasizing political, legal, administrative, and technical support from a variety of councils and departments in local municipality government. The model operates bidirectionally: (1) by pushing political and administrative processes to promote the establishment of conducive structural environments for making healthy choices, and (2) by involving citizens and professional stakeholders at all levels in co-creating processes of shaping their own community and municipality. An operational intervention model was further developed by the OHC project while working with the OHC in two Danish municipalities. The operational intervention model of OHC comprises three main phases and key actions to be implemented at the levels of local government and community: (1) Local government: Situational analysis, dialogue, and political priorities; (2) Community: Thematic co-creation among professional stakeholders; and (3) Target area: Intervention development and implementation. The OHC model will provide municipalities with new tools to improve the citizens’ health and well-being with available resources. Health promotion and disease prevention interventions are developed, implemented, and anchored in the local community by citizens and local stakeholders at municipal and local community levels using collaboration and partnerships as leverage points.

Digital social innovation: An overview and research framework

This study identifies the relationship between local stakeholder pressures and Korean foreign subsidiaries’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) from the stakeholder theory perspective. We classify local stakeholders into primary and secondary groups by their business relatedness as well as foreign subsidiaries’ CSR activities into responsive and strategic CSR by taking into account their willingness. By analyzing survey data of 177 Korean foreign subsidiaries, the key findings are as follows. First, local primary stakeholders, such as customers, employees and suppliers, have a positive impact on responsive CSR activities, but no influence on strategic CSR. In contrast, directly business related primary stakeholders have greater effect on responsive CSR activities rather than on strategic ones. Second, local secondary stakeholders in host countries, such as governments, non-government organizations (NGOs) and local communities, have strong influence on both responsive and strategic CSR activities, whereas secondary stakeholder groups have more influences on strategic CSR activities rather than responsive ones. This means that local secondary stakeholder groups have a strong expectation about subsidiaries’ aggressive social innovation and resource investment to solve issues with local involvement, while primary groups may have some defensive attitude toward business related strategic CSR. This exploratory study finds that foreign subsidiaries should exercise effective change management programs towards primary local stakeholders to practice business and innovation driven strategic CSR activities successfully.

Since the World Food Summit of 1996, the world has strived to achieve sustainable food production and improved nutrition for all. However, the complexity of food and nutrition security, compounded by a growing population, depleting natural resources, changing consumption patterns, and a multitude of environmental shocks to the ecosystem, make it a "wicked problem." Wicked problems transcend the resources of any single discipline and are the focus of contemporary transdisciplinary work. Transdisciplinary research approaches allow us to gain a better understanding of complex contexts, actions, and decisions that determine socioecological systems, and to develop organizational, social, and technological innovations that fit a given situation. Using the case of urban agriculture, which holds both potential and challenges for healthy nutrition and food systems, the key features of transdisciplinary research approaches are identified. As transdisciplinary research stems from a perceived real-life problem, a differentiated understanding and handling of knowledge diversity is needed. Furthermore, there is the need to build and maintain a research team and depending on the number of actors and the diversity of interests involved, the research has to be conceived as a group working process over a period of time requiring group management and process design skills. Though there is no single recipe for a transdisciplinary research process, we present a framework for such a process with iterative loops and multiple interactions among the various spheres of actors through the 4 phases of problem framing, problem analyses, problem solving, and stimulating change. Transdisciplinary research approaches have many challenges and are demanding in the integration of the research environment and processes. The interaction between stakeholders and the joint learning and reflection processes necessitate mutual understanding. However, the management of these interactions is as vital as pure scientific analysis for tackling real-world challenges.

The role of social innovations in transforming the lives of individuals and communities has been a source of popular attention in recent years. This article systematically reviews the available evidence of the relationship between social innovation and its promotion of health equity. Guided by Fair Foundations: The VicHealth framework for health equity and examining four types of social innovation--social movements, service-related social innovations, social enterprise and digital social innovations--we find a growing literature on social innovation activities, but inconsistent evaluative evidence of their impacts on health equities, particularly at the socio-economic, political and cultural level of the framework. Distinctive characteristics of social innovations related to the promotion of health equity include the mobilization of latent or unrealised value through new combinations of (social, cultural and material) resources; growing bridging social capital and purposeful approaches to linking individual knowledge and experience to institutional change. These have implications for health promotion practice and for research about social innovation and health equity.

Policymakers’ strategic choices are directed to seek the endogenous resources to create sustainable development paths in Taranto, a city known as a symbol of industrial pollution because of its steel mill. The research objective is trying to give a strategic framework in order to start development paths, thus making the city of Taranto rediscover a cultural and tourist vocation, thanks to its historical endowment of local resources. The analysis of the archaeological museum of Taranto, “MArTA”, clarifies how a sustainable museum model can help local development and civic innovation thanks to its inclusion potential and its ability to involve various local stakeholders. Therefore, the paper aims to shed light on the path of sustainable strategic innovation undertaken by museum organizations, in particular by the MArTA museum organization. Faced with the social, economic and technological changes that have characterized the last few decades, museums have gradually initiated transformative policies of their core concept. In this way, they have rediscovered themselves as an active part in the process of social innovation and territorial development, following the Sustainable Development Goal 11 of the UN 2030 Agenda. In-depth interviews with the museum management, the local community and the local public and private stakeholders involved in the socio-economic development of the city will be adopted. The paper provides policy indications to public decision-makers operating in the cultural sector and in the local administration in order to design and develop a management model that responds to a systemic perspective.

Amidst societal transformations including economic, political, social, cultural, and ecological realms, social innovation has emerged as a burgeoning field of research and practice. Influenced by societal demands, there has been a paradigm shift in design methodologies and objectives. Diverging from conventional process-oriented design approaches, this paper advocates for an outcome-oriented perspective. It comprehensively explores how design can catalyze "awakening" in social innovation through its intervention at the levels of objects, actions, and outcomes. By emphasizing this shift, the paper offers insights into how design can effectively engage with and contribute to social innovation endeavors.This paper conducts a literature review to analyze the current status and characteristics of social innovation and social innovation design. 1) Social Innovation: Social innovation projects possess four fundamental attributes: innovativeness, practicality, societal participation, and locality. They generally follow six developmental steps: problem identification, action theme determination, involvement of relevant stakeholders and institutions, solution formulation and implementation, retrospective analysis (forming event prototypes), and promotion and diffusion (becoming an incubator). 2) Social Innovation Design: Social innovation design aims for societal transformation, driven by social change, engaging in collaborative design activities. It solely aims at catalyzing positive social change, differing from traditional design in research methods, design objects, and output outcomes. 3) Design intervention in social innovation is not only a necessity for the development of social innovation but also an inevitable consequence of the evolution of design discipline. Existing design tools have accumulated a wealth of mature innovation methods and have been widely applied in fields such as product design, interaction design, and service design. However, due to the lack of a comprehensive discipline system in social innovation design, the role of design in social innovation often remains underutilized. Design requires a more proactive approach to address societal changes.This paper comprehensively discusses how design can play a constructive role in various stages of social innovation through specific case analyses of six social innovation projects including the Di Gua Community and Otera Oyatsu Club. Using deductive reasoning, the paper analyzes and summarizes the perspectives and methods of design intervention in social innovation, concluding that design can "awaken" social innovation in terms of its objects, actions, and outcomes—awakening social consciousness among individuals and facilitating communication between individuals or organizations; stimulating participants' innovative thinking and actively engaging them in social innovation activities, becoming project drivers; and transforming participants into a group with design thinking, some of whom may evolve into future initiators of social innovation, forming a virtuous cycle. This design approach is defined as "social awakening design," aiming to provide researchers with a conceptual framework for design intervention in social innovation and encouraging rational design involvement in social innovation projects.

Among designers working with social innovation and communities, some debates are always present: How to build the relations with the communities we are working with? How do we gain trust and access? As designers, do we need to be part of a community to do a good job? What can we do if our time is limited? What are the exit strategies, when the timeframe of the project is ended? What is the role of documentation, communication and fieldwork from the perspective of a designer? Is visualisation a possible starting point for imagining different worlds and futures? Starting from three different cases from art, cinema and theatre, this chapter discusses some fundamental aspects in the practice of designers working for inclusion and social innovation. The three cases are: Healthy Village with Norman McLaren (China, 1949), Bind the Mountain by Maria Lai (Italy, 1981) and a contemporary experience in Portugal of Teatro Forum from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. Healthy Village shows us how communication and moving images can be a tool for actively engaging and involving communities. Bind the Mountain testifies the transformative power of poetry. Finally, the representations of the Theatre of the Oppressed tell us how a community can make its own stories, understand and represent real-life situations and be actively involved to change their lives.

Subject area Public Sector Management. Study level/applicability MBA or postgraduate program courses in public policy and management. MBA or postgraduate program courses on social innovation, social entrepreneurship and public or collective entrepreneurship. Management development programs for public policy professionals, non-governmental organizations and social enterprises. Case overview Despite several country-wide campaigns to improve sanitation levels, India continues to be the country with the highest number of people, over 600 million, practicing open defecation. This case outlines the Sabar Shouchagar Project (Toilets for Everyone) undertaken by the District Administration of Nadia District in West Bengal that transformed the region into the first open-defecation-free district in India. The case begins with providing the context of the problem of open defecation, why it has been hard to eliminate and how undertaking a project to eliminate open-defecation-free practices has myriad institutional and economic challenges. The case then details the conceptualization and execution of the complex Sabar Shouchagar Project which involved a loose coalition of various state programs and civil society organizations. The case ends with questions on the continuity of this project beyond the tenure of the current District Magistrate and on the replicability of such an ambitious project in other parts of the country. The setting of this case, a government agency, is different than most cases and provides an opportunity for students to talk about a state agency and its interstices with civil society. This case explores how to create change through large government machinery and allows the student to explore aspects of social mobilization, social change and social innovation. If taught within a postgraduate or MBA program, the case would serve well to dispel stereotypes and biases about government bureaucracies (such as slow timelines, limited efficacy of projects and so on). Expected learning outcomes After discussion and analysis of the case, students will be able to: appreciate how administrators within a large government bureaucracy address an ambitious and complex public health issue in a developing world context. Understand the on-the-ground challenges that arise when a change agent pursues a worthwhile goal. There are difficulties such as getting resources beyond what a government office has access to, getting alignments between different key actors within the local community and forging coalitions. Understand initiatives for social transformation within a developing country context. Specifically, the case unpacks the cultural, political, economic contexts that determine how social innovations may be pursued. Understand capacity-building and change management. Evaluate efforts required to sustain social change efforts and the challenges and pathways with respect to replication of successful social change projects in other geographies. Appreciate the design of civic engagement practices in public policy implementation. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email www.support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes. Subject Code CSS: 10: Public Sector management.

Pesantren are educational institutions that have strong social ties in local communities and some of them implement entrepreneurial activities in the agricultural sector. Therefore Pesantren have a big capacity as an agricultural movers and produce social innovation with the rural community. In the process of social change in the village, pesantren have the capacity in producing agents of change that encourage social innovation in the agricultural sector. This study aims to analyze the capacity of pesantren as an agricultural movers and create a new agricultural innovators in the process of social change in the village. The results of this study indicate that in the process of social change in the village, pesantren can accelerate social change in the village through the activities of social innovation in agriculture. In addition, the process of education activity by pesantren is able to create an graduate who are also new innovators in the community. In conclusion, pesantren are able to become agricultural movers and creator rural agents of change.

BackgroundThe bush banana (Uvaria chamae P. Beauv.) is a wild edible fruit, but its population has declined recently in Benin. This study assessed the traditional knowledge and use of U. chamae, along with the key factors relevant to its conservation and sustainable management. The study reports (i) traditional knowledge and effective use of the species by local communities in relation to socioeconomic factors, (ii) local perceptions of threats to U. chamae, and (iii) conservation strategies suggested by local communities to ensure its sustainable use and management in Benin.MethodsThis study was carried out in the Guineo-Congolian and Sudano-Guinean zones of Benin where the species occurs. The data were collected from June to December 2021. The study sites were selected based on the occurrence and geographical distribution of U. chamae, while taking into account the representativeness of the diversity of sociolinguistic groups in the overall sample. Semi-structured questionnaires were administered to 434 respondents belonging to 15 sociolinguistic groups living in the phytodistricts of U. chamae distribution. The relative frequency of citation of the different uses was analyzed in relation to the socioeconomic attributes of the respondents. A principal component analysis was performed to highlight the relationships between the different uses and the sociolinguistic groups. Finally, a linear model was used to assess the effects of the sociocultural factors of the respondents on the use values of U. chamae.ResultsA total of 71 traditional use categories were identified for U. chamae, sixty of which were used by the respondents. Women and elderly members of the Fon, Aïzo and Mahi sociolinguistic groups, particularly those involved in traditional medicine and living in the phytodistrict of Plateau, were the primary users of U. chamae. The main use categories, summarized from all the respondents, were medicinal (97%), food (84.10%), magico-religious (52.92%), firewood (25.52%), and material for handicrafts (7.30%). The most valued plant parts were roots, fruits, leaves, and branches. The main threats to U. chamae are largely due to human activities rather than climatic factors.ConclusionThis study revealed that U. chamae is a multipurpose shrub, mainly used in traditional medicine and as a food source. There is little consensus among local people about its medicinal uses. Investigating the nutritional, biochemical, and toxicological properties of U. chamae extracts could help to verify the claims attributed to the plant. Local communities suggested the promotion of home and botanical gardens as the main conservation measures to ensure the sustainable use and management of U. chamae in Benin.