Social Innovation, Societal Change, and the Role of Policies

Robert Lukesch,Ivana Živojinović,Alice Ludvig,Bill Slee,Gerhard Weiss

doi:10.3390/su12187407

Robert Lukesch, Ivana Živojinović + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187407

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Abstract

Political frameworks and policies have a strong influence on the institutional ecosystem and on governance patterns, which in turn shape the operational space of civil society initiatives. This article aims to explore the social and institutional conditions and policy initiatives that foster or hinder social innovation and the pathways leading from social innovation to institutional change through to actual impacts on policies and political frameworks, in order to understand how policymakers can encourage and enable social innovation. The article builds on an extensive empirical background to develop a heuristic model to facilitate decision making for a policy environment propitious for the emergence of social innovation. The resulting model sets up a triadic configuration of (i) a committed core of key actors, (ii) the benevolent shadow of hierarchy represented by public actors, and (iii) multifunctional and malleable intermediary support structures for a successful development of social innovation initiatives. The model is discussed and validated by reference to three in-depth case studies from differing institutional settings. We conclude that policy should recognize that social innovation will achieve most when the triadic relationships between the state, intermediary organizations, and local actors are working together synergistically.

Highlights

Social innovation has hitherto been defined in various ways, but there is a common understanding that it connects to social change emanating from people’s everyday interactions, ascending, spreading, and gaining traction and visibility from often inconspicuous beginnings, until it reshapes the diverse ways in which social groups and communities deal with social, economic, or environmental challenges
It originates from academic discourse rather than from everyday language [1], but the actual relationship between social innovation initiatives on one hand and political frameworks and policies on the other has not been sufficiently investigated so far, not for rural areas where institutional thickness is likely to be less than in urban environments [2]
This research gap has been addressed by the EU research project SIMRA (Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas) [6], which produced a wealth of empirical material and created the possibility to explore the policy implications of social innovation in rural areas, the results of which can be tested and further developed on the basis of additional empirical findings

Summary

Introduction

Social innovation has hitherto been defined in various ways, but there is a common understanding that it connects to social change emanating from people’s everyday interactions, ascending, spreading, and gaining traction and visibility from often inconspicuous beginnings, until it reshapes the diverse ways in which social groups and communities deal with social, economic, or environmental challenges. Both social and political aspects resonate in the term “social innovation”. This research gap has been addressed by the EU research project SIMRA (Social Innovation in Marginalized Rural Areas) [6], which produced a wealth of empirical material and created the possibility to explore the policy implications of social innovation in rural areas, the results of which can be tested and further developed on the basis of additional empirical findings.

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