Utilitarism as the theoretical basis of humanitarian criteria of social innovations

Social innovation is related to new products, services, and models aiming to improve human well-being and create social relationships and collaborations. The business model innovation (BMI) context can foster social innovation and can be applied in social innovation projects and initiatives. What is important for social BMI is the social mission, which needs to be defined in order to be able to move forward with the strategy, the value proposition, and the best practices of the business. Based on the existing social innovation literature and case studies, this paper proposes an “ecosystem” approach that can provide an integrated framework for social business models. This approach adopts the quadruple/quintuple helix innovation models which are able to promote social innovation, enabling a locus-centric and triple-bottom-line-centric entrepreneurial process of knowledge discovery and exploitation. Such a framework may help to study the role, nature, and dynamics of social co-opetitive fractal ecosystems, given emphasis on civil society, political structures, environment, and sustainability. In addition, the social innovation case studies presented in this paper highlight that targeted open innovation is a key element for social BMI.

Social Innovation Promoting Policy and its Implementation in the European Union

This article focuses on the identification and role of social innovation in urban development. The aim is to further the understanding of the contradictory relationship between state and civil society, using a thorough analysis of the process of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, the capital city of Rio Grande do Sul—the most southern state of Brazil. The first section spells out four different concepts of the relationship between state and civil society and their implications for social innovation. In the second section, these popular movements are shown to be embedded in the historically rooted structure of patrimonialism and capitalism in Brazil. The third section provides an historical analysis of Brazilian popular movements which represent new key actors in civil society. The fourth section offers a detailed description of the process of the participatory budget. In the final section, conclusions are drawn about social innovation in local politics, focusing on the empowering experiments with new public and democratic forms of the local state accessible to civil society and its interests.

The article considers the theoretical foundations of social innovations. The views of Ukrainianand foreign scientists on the nature of social innovations are given. Social innovation is: 1) theformation of new ideas, strategies, concepts, organizations, forms of organizations; 2) the processPressing problems of public administration 2(58)/2020 221Social and humanitarian policyof change (new decisions), long-term social change of non-standard solutions to social problems,the development of structures, principles, practices; 3) changes in behavior, preferences of people,in the processes of influencing change, in regulation, policy, organizational structures and practices.It is proved that social innovations can have four definitions: a new solution to a social problem;innovative product, the use of which can affect the solution of a social problem; the way of spreadingsocial innovation; uniqueness of social innovation. Examples of social innovations in the educationalsphere are presented. The role of social innovations in the state social policy is determined.For the effective existence of social innovations, it is necessary to manage them. In this regard,it should be noted that when defining the concept of “management of social innovation” it is necessaryto take into account many approaches to management (situational, factorial, etc. approaches). At thesame time, social innovation should be considered as a component of social policy.1. Social innovation or innovative direction of social development is the process ofimplementation of social innovation in the state. This is a new social offer for a certain society, a newrelationship between members of society. The basis of social innovation is not technical innovations,new methods of interaction between members of society, new criteria for their behavior, actions,state of the social environment.2. The introduction of social innovation involves a certain course of action based on the studyof the features of social innovation as a component of social development. If we analyze the principleof action of the innovator in terms of social and technological innovation, it becomes clear that hisactions will be determined by the specifics of social innovation as a component of social development.3. The specificity of social innovation as a component of social development is determined mainlyby the fact that social innovation is not related to technology and technology. The main differencebetween social and technological innovations is in the new actions of the innovator, which are based onfundamentally new principles. The effect of technological innovation is primarily to increase productivity,the effect of social innovation is to achieve a social effect that is difficult to measure mathematically.This is primarily an increase in the level of satisfaction with the social benefits of society.4. Social innovations are accompanied by a number of actions of the subjects of innovation,namely:‑ the presence of positive social effects from social innovations that need to be shown tosociety;‑ elimination of negative effects from the implementation of social innovations;‑ analysis of the legal status of innovation through the definition of regulatory and legal supportfor the implementation of social innovation;‑ analysis of the emergence of disputes in society caused by the emergence of socialinnovations.

Every truth passes through three stages.First, it is ridiculed.Second, it is violently opposed.Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. -Arthur SchopenhauerMuch of what we now take for granted in social life began as radical innovation.A century ago, few believed that ordinary people could be trusted to drive cars at high speed, the idea of a national health service freely available was seen as absurdly utopian, the concept of "kindergarten" was still considered revolutionary, and only one country had given women the vote.Yet in the interim, these and many other social innovations have progressed from the margins to the mainstream.During some periods in recent history, civil society provided most of the impetus for social innovation (see box, facing page).The great wave of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century was accompanied by an extraordinary upsurge of social enterprise and innovation: mutual self-help, microcredit, building societies, cooperatives, trade unions, reading clubs, and philanthropic business leaders creating model towns and model schools.In nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain, civil society pioneered the most influential new models of childcare, housing, community development and social care.At other times governments have taken the lead in social innovation-for example, in the years after 1945 democratic governments built welfare states, schooling systems, and institutions using methods such as credit banks for farmers and networks of adult education colleges.(This was a period when many came to see civic and charitable organizations as too parochial, paternalist, and inefficient to meet social needs on any scale.)There is every reason to believe that the pace of social innovation will, if anything, accelerate in the coming century.There is certainly more money flowing into NGOs and civil society than ever before.Economies in both developed and (to

BackgroundImproved access to health care and quality of services require integrated efforts and innovations, including community empowerment and participation in transformation processes. Chagas disease is a neglected tropical disease that is generally controlled by insecticide spraying. To achieve community empowerment in a health program, actions for social innovations may include: community-based research, interdisciplinary and intersectoral participation, community perception of direct benefits and participation in health or environmental improvements. The aim of this study was to describe and analyze the processes by which an interdisciplinary team, in collaboration with communities of Comapa, Guatemala, developed an effective solution to address the risk for Chagas disease.MethodsA qualitative study involving interviews semi-structured and direct observation was conducted using a case study approach to describe and understand the community-based research and intervention process developed by researchers from the Laboratory of Applied Entomology and Parasitology of the Universidad de San Carlos of Guatemala (Laboratorio de Entomologia y Parasitologia Aplicada). Nine interviews were conducted with the investigators, innovators, members of the community in which the intervention had been implemented. NVivo software (version 12) was used for the emergent coding and analysis of the interviews.ResultsProcesses of social transformation were evident within households, and the communities that transcended the mere improvement of walls and floors. New social dynamics that favored the household economy and conditions of hygiene and home care that positively impacted the health of the community. We describe how the integration of criteria of social innovation into a home improvement strategy for Chagas disease control, can generate processes of transformation in health by considering sociocultural conditions, encouraging dialogue between public health approaches and traditional practices. We identify and discuss processes for Social Innovations in Health and identify their potential in improving community health in Latin America.ConclusionsWhen social innovation criteria are included in a health control initiative, the community-based research and the interdisciplinary and intersectoral participation facilitate the implementation of the control strategy, the perceived benefits by the community and its empowerment to sustain and share the strategy. The case study provided understanding of the intersectoral and interdisciplinary dynamics in particular contexts, and documented the relevance of innovation criteria in health processes.

Since the early 1990s, the process of privatization and marketization of public policy led to the individualization and fragmentation of programs, but it also gave the opportunity for strengthening the structure of civil society and the expansion of its capacity to intervene in social reality. Social innovation and social entrepreneurship arise as important factors for the renewal of the welfare state. The change in social structure was studied by the EMES-European Research Network from the perspective of the emergence of a new type of social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. There are studies that define social innovation and social entrepreneurship as distinct concepts, but in this article we will define them almost as synonymous in that they both combine the creation of social value with change and consider the need for integration between process and outcome. In the light of this theoretical approach, social entrepreneurship and social innovation in public policy are closely related to the participatory and democratic structures of government and emerge at the intersection of state, market and civil society. The Nordic countries show a trend of active support from the state to civil society but in Brazil the emergence of social entrepreneurial principles starting from the end of the 1980s, with the universalization and democratization of public policy. That led to a significant number of trials of new participatory and integrated institutional arrangements from the principles of decentralization, social control and participation of civil society, which can be regarded as a process of social innovation. Key words: social innovation, social entrepreneurship, public policy, participation.

Social innovation is a topic of increasing interest to policymakers, civil society, and business globally. However, there has yet to be a comprehensive account of the economic contexts of social innovation. This book aims to address this research gap. It weaves together work from economics, sociology and ethics for a novel theoretical approach: the Extended Social Grid Model (ESGM). Based upon four years of work across a range of countries, this book provides a thorough and nuanced discussion of how social innovation can address major social issues including marginalization, access to housing, clean water, and microcredit. Empirically, the book considers how social innovation has interfaced with the economy, but also the state and civil society in terms of long-term projects, programmes, and policies that have emerged and evolved within and across European states to drive more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable societies.

Social innovation acknowledges that alternative arrangements between state, market and civil society are called for if innovations are to be sustainable. This chapter examines grassroots-led processes of social innovation in the field of poverty in Flanders, inspired by Ibrahim’s model of grassroots-led development. Inspired by it, we discuss the paradoxes for a politicising approach in the practice of the Flemish grassroots-led social innovation practices, Where People in Poverty Speak Out (WPPSO). We address two central questions. First, we demonstrate that social innovations such as WPPSO that aimed to improve the voice of people in poverty cannot trust only in the quality of the process of grassroots-led social innovation. A process-oriented approach might be a necessary condition for social innovation, but the democratisation of policy processes such as WPPSO do not necessarily create the conditions for concrete enhancements of the living conditions of people in poverty. Our second question was if other factors, outside of the innovation process, also need to be considered. A key external factor was that of encapsulation tendencies in policy production. The participative way of policy making about poverty with the grassroots organisations of people in poverty has brought about a separate domain of poverty policy.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework for developing social innovation competencies in social sciences within the agenda of the Relational University. It explores the educational strategy promoted by the Social Innovation Excubator (SIE), an experimental social sciences lab that provides students with a work-based learning scenario focusing on the solution of social problems.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper explores a new learning strategy to promote the Relational University. This exploration designs an experimental infrastructure named SIE. This infrastructure promotes the link between work-based learning and social innovation to develop four key competencies: heuristic, epistemic, relational and experimental skills.FindingsThere is little attention in the literature about work-based learning and social innovation. The conceptual framework provides a program on Social Innovation Capitalization (SIC) in the framework of the SIE. This framework provides a process of four phases to prototype social innovations: exploration, experimentation, exploitation and evaluation as a process to boost social innovation skills.Research limitations/implicationsThe conceptual framework of Relational University is an innovative and integrative model (companies, social organizations, public sector and civil society) that develops a work-based learning strategy through SIE infrastructure. The SIE has a strong implication for social sciences developing an experimental space to explore, exploit and evaluate local social problems.Practical implicationsThe SIE infrastructure and the SIC program promotes a new strategy in social sciences to boost employability (new competencies), entrepreneurship (pilot social organizations) and intra-entrepreneurship (social innovation in organizations).Originality/valueThis paper proposes a conceptual and empirical framework to develop the Relational University through a new learning strategy linking work-based learning and social innovation. This practical framework covers a lack in the work-based learning perspective opening a new line of research linked to social innovation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the conceptual construct of social innovation in business as distinct from social innovation implemented by civil society and the state. The general absence of sustained research and analysis of this phenomenon, and the dominance of grey and policy-oriented literature, mean that a broadly accepted definition of how social innovation theorises the changing role of business in society is missingDesign/methodology/approachAn integrative review of the representative literature on social innovation was conducted. The analysis focused on the key arguments made about the involvement of business actors in processes of social innovation and interweaved in this study to build a logically coherent definition of what social innovation in business means for the bulk of those who write and speak about it today. The scope of the literature review was expanded by integrating insights from the extant “business in society” and social innovation literatures, thereby adding clarity to the authors' conceptualisation.FindingsThe findings indicate that social innovation is best understood as a process driven by human relations, morality and creative capacity breaking routines and path dependencies. It fundamentally relies on the socially constructed dynamics between business and social actors who carry ideas, focus their energies, mobilise competences and create new complementarities to tackle social problems. Economic gain, in this approach, is at best an outcome of social innovation, not its engine.Originality/valueWhat this literature review unveils that is unique about social innovation, and contributes to an enrichment of the “business in society” debate beyond the business case and win-win scenarios depicted by most scholars in this field, is that it best manifests itself as an informal social process that comes into existence at the margins of conventional ways of thinking and organising business activities. Business actors involved in social innovation are framed as self-directed and self-organised around the moral purpose of fostering social progress.

The article at hand discusses social innovations as an increasingly significant subject of discourse within civil society. Based on a growing awareness of the limited problem-solving potential of technological innovations, established control and problem-solving routines, the authors point out the necessity of social innovations. They argue that social innovations will become increasingly important, particularly with regard to the preservation and expansion of innovative capability in companies and societies. Their central thesis is that a paradigm shift is taking place in the innovation system as we transition from an industrial to a knowledge and service society, as a result of which the relationship between technological and social innovations is changing in favor of the latter. At the same time the article criticizes the fact that the debate on national and regional innovation systems deals mainly with the structural, political and institutional requirements for innovative capability at a national and regional level, while social innovation as an independent innovation type is considered only in passing. In order to remedy this situation, the authors first examine the question of what makes an innovation a social innovation, focusing among other things on the connection between social innovation and social change and the diffusion of social innovations. In the next step, they discuss trends and future research areas of social innovation, and analyze how social innovations can contribute to dealing with global dilemmas.

Assessing suppliers considering social sustainability innovation factors during COVID-19 disaster

Areas of research in economics and management science become increasingly close – they overlap and become very similar. New events, new products of people’s actions, new patterns of behaviour arise with a pace unknown before. Institutionalisation of these phenomena aimed at their broad codification also takes on new forms. We live in an age of ubiquitous innovativeness. Naturally, the question arises: should innovations be perceived in the same way as in the past? Are there any new types of innovations that have appeared lately? Are the current definitions of market and social innovations still up to date? The aim of the article is to present a change in approach to innovations over time, with particular focus on their market and social aspects. The author attempts to answer the following questions: how did technological progress visible in the networking of economy influence the understanding of social innovations, what is the role of social production and exchange which replace gradually market exchange, in the social innovation definition, to what extent is the cooperation within a community in the virtual space characteristic of a special class of social innovation? The research method used by the author is based on literature studies on innovations and on the economics of cooperation (access, sharing, co‑use). It comprises an analysis of different concepts of innovation, in particular different definitions of the name, an analysis of different approaches to cooperation economics, comparisons of the obtained results, and conclusions formulation. The approach to innovation changes over time – from a technical, social and market approach to a differently understood today social approach. Contemporary, the criteria for innovation “society” are different. The understanding of innovation is influenced by the increased role of social production and exchange at the expense of market exchange. The networking of the information economy significantly strengthens the social aspect of innovation. Cooperation within a community, including co‑creation of goods, access to them, their co‑use and sharing, is an extreme example of the advantage of the social dimension of innovation over its market aspect.

This paper reviews governance and public governance related to an emerging area of policy interest – social innovation. The European Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (2001) focused on openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence in public policy as characteristics of good governance. The EC has prioritised social innovation to address policy problems. Yet, the extant literature and research on social innovation is sparse. The paper questions whether it is a new mode of governance which contributes to good governance or a continuum of neoliberal reforms of the state which alters the relationship between the state, market and civil society.