Social Capital and Social Innovation in Peripheral Regions. An Empirical Example of the Middle Pomerania Region in Poland

Entrepreneurs in peripheral areas need to fully utilize a multidimensional regional environment in order to reduce regional innovation gaps. To gain a deeper theoretical and empirical understanding of the determinants of innovation processes in peripheral areas, this article sheds light not only on hard infrastructure and financial factors, but also on institutional, social, and relational factors. Studies of innovation in peripheral areas were conducted with the classic concept of regional innovation systems. Based on the results of a survey among 300 entrepreneurs in Polish peripheral regions, it was found that peripheral regions suffer from a deficit of human and social capital, particularly local leaders and mentoring and networking assistance. In addition, the analysis shows that peripheral regions do not have an effective innovation development strategy, lack institutional capital, and local authorities are not working to remove local barriers.

Why does the progress of civilisation require social innovations?

The ability of self-reconstruction is essential to the survival of social organizations. To meet the social challenges, these organizations must enhance their creative and innovative processes. Although an extensive literature describes the impact of social capital on innovations, research on how social and organizational innovations affect organizational performance and social capital is very slim. This paper makes an addition to the literature by investigating the impact of organizational and social innovations in explaining the relationship of social capital and organizational performance. Confirmatory factor analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and structural equation modelling are used on the data gained from social organizations in China. It is found that social and organizational innovations affect the organizational performance in positive way while social capital has a vital role in this relationship by improving mutual cooperation, interaction and trust. The mediating role of social and organizational innovations in the relationship of social capital and organizational performance is formalized through structural equation modeling. The empirical findings reveal that organizational and social innovations have mediating role in relationship of organizational performance and social capital. The empirical results do not support the direct relationship between organizational performance and social capital or between innovations and organizational performance. It is also found that social and organizational innovations are necessary to improve the relationship of organizational performance and social capital.

‘Staying in the Nationalist Bubble’

Social and organizational innovations are one of the most effective ways to gain social collaboration for effective, rapid, and coordinated interventions. An analysis of the relationship among organizational performance (OP), social innovations (SI) and organizational innovation (OI) in social organizations (SOs) is little discussed in the literature and much less with main component analysis. This paper is an effort to provide some empirical evidences about social and organizational innovations that social organizations in China have implemented to address the social issues of the society. A survey of Chinese SO’s is conducted during beginning two months of 2022 in provinces of Jiangsu, Guangdong and Zhejiang to attain the statistics and assessing the insights of the executives of the SOs participating in this study with respect to organizational performance, social and organizational innovations. The technique used to select the sample is a non-probabilistic sampling and multiple linear regression model is applied to determine the partial impact of organizational innovations and social innovations on the organizational performance. The grouping of the variables is carried out through main components analysis. The empirical findings of the study highlight that Chinese SOs are innovative because they adopt management strategies to address the social issues associated with their institutional mission. There are four groups of derived components from organizational and social innovations based on the empirical evidence: SO’s innovative activities to modify the environment; inside innovative measures to enhance SO’s performance; innovative activities of SO’s to enhance their relationships with outside actors; innovative measures to improve the management of SOs related to their mission and institutional projects. The findings of this study offer an efficient solution to government and policy makers for involving SOs in terms of planning of social development in China. The social and organizational innovations are very necessary to overcome the social issues so government should encourage the establishment and sustainability of social organizations.

Rural innovations in biosphere reserves – A social network approach

Social capital and innovation performance of digital firms: Serial mediation effect of cross-border knowledge search and absorptive capacity

We examine the role of change agency in social innovations. Agency in social innovations can create new resources and capacities for transformative change in a region. To date, there is a lack of empirical studies investigating how agency manifests itself in social innovations. In particular, research has not yet investigated the detailed activities of social innovation actors throughout the phases of social innovation processes. In this paper we apply the concept of trinity of change agency to investigate the activities of social innovation actors. Using innovation biographies and data from 61 interviews for 11 case studies of social innovation in a peripheral mountain region in Switzerland, we analyse the social innovation process from an actor-oriented perspective. Our findings show that the various types of change agency are highly present in social innovations. The significance of change agency alters throughout the innovation process. Our analysis shows that all kinds of actors performed change agency during the social innovation process. Interestingly, same actors performed different types of change agency during the social innovation process. The findings suggest that change agency is as a significant element in social innovations and that we need to consider it as a transformative element of social innovation processes. When policymakers take change agency into account in creating an environment in which social innovations can flourish, there is a great chance that social innovations can contribute to changing regional development paths and perhaps even to regional transformation.

This Thematic Issue seeks to explore critical perspectives of an international nature on social innovation (SI), social enterprise (SE) and/or social solidarity economy (SSE). The aim is to examine the grand narrative, explore the ontological assumptions of the field, challenge the normative and present alternatives that draw attention to political economy, critical theory and critical management studies. Critical perspectives emerged in social innovation (SI) literature as a concerted effort sometime in 2008. A few voices sounded from the edges of the field much earlier. Ash Amin, Professor of Geography at Durham University, inspected the new favourite of public policy way back in 2002, discarded it as a "a poor substitute for a welfare state" and never returned to the subject. There were heated debates that challenged the grand narrative of SI at the International Social Innovation Research Conferences (ISIRC) (once called the Social Enterprise Research Conference before becoming ISIRC with the involvement of the social innovation theme from Skoll Centre). The Voluntary Sector Studies Network (VSSN) conferences picked away at the promise of unlimited performance and achievement of the upstart SE in a mature voluntary and charity network (

This paper is based on research that centres on the city of Tokyo, a mature city that is experiencing various transformations, in order to show how social capital and innovation can help build up resilient communities. It presents two major topics: 1) the potential of localities and their social capital and social innovation to actively react to change, and 2) the role of localities for inclusive urban governance. By focusing on five small neighbourhoods in the south of Taito-ward in central-east Tokyo, the paper addresses the following questions: a) what kinds of social networks and interaction exist at the local level, b) how are residents contributing to neighbourhood revitalization and community identity, and c) what are specific examples of social innovative practices, emerging in periods of crisis, in the case-study area as a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic? By adopting a mixed methods approach drawing especially on in-depth interviews conducted with a range of independent business owners, the study reveals the dynamics between long-term residents and newcomers as they negotiate shared identities that continue to shape the present and future of some of Tokyo’s oldest neighbourhoods. The research findings highlight the need for good urban governance to draw on an improved understanding of the potential of localities, place-based social capital building, and new social practices that are emerging in local third sectors, such as volunteer-run industry-based organizations, which are vital in maintaining informal networks as an alternative to more traditional neighbourhood groups to bond, bridge, and link diverse community members.

In the last few decades as American society and urban life has changed dramatically, public health and urban sociological research has focused on the effect of residential location on individual well being. In recent years, social capital theory has been used as an important pathway in understanding the associations between where one lives and health and social outcomes. This research has often relied on Putnam’s theory (1993, 1995, 2000) and a communitarian approach to defining social capital and its possible relationship to health and well-being. Although Putnam’s social capital constructs have been popular with many researchers, it has been criticized for its lack of depth and its inability to explain the causal pathways in which social capital and health operate. In addition to the negative impacts of this over-reliance of Putnam’s work within the public health literature, there has been substantial criticism that the measures used by Putnam based theorists are too conceptually broad and limited in scope as it is often reduced to three variables. In this research, we use a more recent paradigm of social capital theory that delineates social capital into several dimensions thereby enabling one to understand that different forms of social capital and cohesion have different impacts (both negative and positive) on health outcomes and well-being. We will evaluate a strictly Putnam-based social capital model as measured by the predominant three variables against the utility of a multi-dimensional model that measures social capital across several constructs and variables. We utilize this re-specified framework that delineates the different forms of social capital from social cohesion (the Putnam-based Traditional Model) while incorporating neighborhood social conditions as antecedent factors within the model with a new dataset. Additionally, recent sociological research using this different paradigm highlighted the important role of individual attachment to the neighborhood as an important mediator in the association between social capital and health outcomes. We will analyze data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a longitudinal birth cohort study of families in 20 cities with populations of 200,000 or more people. Using FFCWB wave 4 data responses by mothers, we investigate the role of social capital as measured across four dimensions, social cohesion (the Putnam-based Traditional Model), individual neighborhood attachment, and neighborhood socio-economic conditions on the likelihood of maternal smoking, drinking, and self rated health. Moreover, this model will be enhanced by the addition of another feature of social capital that was not addressed in prior research, bridging social capital. Bridging social capital has also been defined as relationships among individuals who are not alike in social identity or characteristics. In recent years, bridging social capital at times has been further refined to highlight the relationships with heterogeneous networks who do not share the same power structures and institutions, and economic spheres. This has been referred to as “linking” social capital. In this research, we will incorporate a measure of bridging social capital to highlight the possible role this form of social capital may play in understanding the association of social capital and health outcomes. This research extends the current literature by applying a recently developed model of social capital on a new data set. This study hopes to not only to explore self rated health, neighborhood socioeconomic conditions, indicators of social capital (as defined by social support, social leverage, informal social control, neighborhood organization participation, and bridging social capital), and the role of individual neighborhood attachment but also highlight the importance for public health researchers to use a multidimensional approach rather than rely on utilizing a traditional Putnam-based approach to understanding the association between social capital and health and well-being. These different dimensions, along with other health factors, will be statistically tested through multiple regression analysis, which will highlight a hypothesized interaction effect between individual neighborhood attachment and social capital and its association with health outcomes and behaviors. In this research, we aim to further advance the public health discourse regarding the association between social capital, measured across several dimensions and conceptualized through a network based lens, and health outcomes.

The term social capital tends to appear more and more in international literature as a major factor for accessing new sources of knowledge and information, creating innovation and supporting regional innovation systems. The main objective of this paper is to contribute insights to this stream of research by testing empirically the impact of social capital on innovation at the level of NUTS-2 and more specifically, on the 13 regions of Greece. The paper begins by defining social capital along with the various forms that this can acquire, the ways that social capital is measured internationally as well as its role in regional development. The above is followed by a close study of the contribution of social capital to the diffusion of knowledge and the strengthening of regional innovation. Finally, by evaluating and exploiting the results of the recent researches by the European social survey (ESS) and the regional innovation scoreboard (RIS) on the 13 Greek regions (NUTS-2) the paper will firstly present the available social capital reserves, secondly the most recent regional innovation performance and thirdly it will test to what extent social capital can be a source of high performance of regional innovation.

The term social capital tends to appear more and more in international literature as a major factor for accessing new sources of knowledge and information, creating innovation and supporting regional innovation systems. The main objective of this paper is to contribute insights to this stream of research by testing empirically the impact of social capital on innovation at the level of NUTS-2 and more specifically, on the 13 regions of Greece. The paper begins by defining social capital along with the various forms that this can acquire, the ways that social capital is measured internationally as well as its role in regional development. The above is followed by a close study of the contribution of social capital to the diffusion of knowledge and the strengthening of regional innovation. Finally, by evaluating and exploiting the results of the recent researches by the European social survey (ESS) and the regional innovation scoreboard (RIS) on the 13 Greek regions (NUTS-2) the paper will firstly present the available social capital reserves, secondly the most recent regional innovation performance and thirdly it will test to what extent social capital can be a source of high performance of regional innovation.

This study examines the role of social capital in improving the B40 household income, where social innovation and social entrepreneurship act as mediators. Past studies provided a limited explanation of the role of social innovation and social entrepreneurship in describing the relationship between social capital and income. The study involved 304 respondents selected through purposive sampling. Using a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model, the findings showed that social capital factors in all dimensions influence social innovation and social entrepreneurship. Social networks and social responsibility are essential social capitals for increasing social innovation and social entrepreneurship. The findings imply that social entrepreneurship should be empowered to effectively strengthen its role in boosting the B40 household income. Social capital development with an emphasis on social innovation and social entrepreneurship is expected to create an innovative society that can reduce income inequality and enhance well-being of the B40 households.

Purpose The study is positioned at the crossroads of transformative social marketing and social innovation literature through the lens of participatory design (PD). This exploratory study aims to explore how social enterprises in India engage economically marginalized people in transformative social marketing and innovation for sustainable development through PD. Design/methodology/approach The study includes a case study with a matched pairs analysis approach. The data analysis reports three themes depicting the role of PD in different stages of the social innovation process (codiscovery, codesign and scaling-up), the challenges faced in the process and the outcomes of the PD process. Findings The authors propose that social enterprises can act as sustainable development catalysts for more inclusive sustainable development through their proactive and creative uses of PD. Still, PD also has limitations for addressing the challenges stemming from marginalized contexts, which requires effective social marketing strategies to overcome. Originality/value The study contributes to the emerging dialogue on PD with marginalized users and widens the scope of studies on transformative social marketing and innovation. The findings also provide practical insights for PD practitioners on how designers can learn from diverse PD practices in the context of economically marginalized people.