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Climate emergency, social inequalities, poverty, or racism represent only some entries on a growing list of pressing issues that concern society. Scholars are trying to play their part in investigating and informing effective action on these grand challenges of our times (Howard-Grenville et al. 2019). Across geographic contexts and fields of activity, social innovation moves into the centre of attention across the social sciences as an effective response to these challenges (Anheier, Krlev, & Mildenberger, 2019; George et al. 2019; Howaldt et al. 2019; Jacobi, Edmiston, and Ziegler 2017; Rao-Nicholson, Vorley, and Khan 2017). Current examples of social innovation range from new employment models built on a special ability image of disability (Hockerts 2015), to decentralised renewable energy production (Huybrechts and Haugh 2017), to new forms of contracting social service provision, such as social impact bonds (Edmiston and Nicholls 2017). However, social innovation is not a new phenomenon. Historical examples comprise social housing (Schimpf et al. 2020) and public freshwater supply (Schimpf and Ziegler 2020), or mutual and co-operative movements (Tischer et al. 2016). Also, explicit references to social innovation in the social sciences date at least back to the late 1980s (Zapf 1989). And yet we are still in search for a systematic overview of the complications of understanding innovation and societal transformation when the ‘social’ comes in – while most agree social innovation is somehow different from ‘innovation as we know it’ (Dawson and Daniel 2010; Nicholls and Murdock 2012; Oosterlynck 2013; Van Wijk et al. 2018 to name but a few).
The diversity of engaged actors and proponents of social innovation is one component in making its investigation challenging. Social innovation is promoted by civil society organizations such as social enterprises (Ramus et al. 2018; Seelos and Mair 2017), firms (Phillips et al. 2015), or public administration (Moulaert et al. 2007). A second component is represented by the circumstance that social innovation is often not a single service or product (Krlev, Anheier, and Mildenberger 2019a), but may comprise complex social processes such as shifts in public discourse as currently witnessed in the Black Lives Matter movement, for example. Scholars have recently drawn on both of these components and as a way to deal with the resulting specificities suggested a multi-level perspective analysis (Pel et al. 2020), which has a tradition in the literature on socio-technological transitions that may span decades of analysis (Geels 2002). In addition to approaches that provide us with the bigger picture of the social innovation process, we need to advance knowledge about how organizational conditions may affect social innovation performance (Shier, Handy, and Jennings 2019; Tortia, Degavre, and Poledrini 2020) as well as the (potential) impacts and outcomes social innovators may create (Berzin, Pitt-Catsouphes, and Gaitan-Rossi 2015; Taylor, Torugsa, and Arundel 2019) – as a goal and as a by-product in the process of innovating socially. The articles in our special issue are contributing to these emergent streams of literature.
Social Innovation: Comparative Perspectives investigates socio-economic impact. Since it is hard to establish causality and to measure social properties when investigating impact, especially at the level of society, the book narrows down impact to one priority aspect: social innovation understood as organizations capacity to generate novel ideas, ways and means of doing things, of addressing public and social problems of many kinds.
This volumes primary assertion is that the Third Sector, specifically through stimulating civic involvement, is best placed to produce social innovation, outperforming business firms and state agencies in this regard. By investigating actor contributions to social innovation across seven fields of activity, Social innovation: Comparative Perspectives develops our understanding of why and how the Third Sector is central to functioning, cohesive and viable societies.
This volume is based on contributions of the project "ITSSOIN Impact of the Third Sector as Social Innovation" funded by the European Commission under the 7th framework programme. It will be of insight across disciplines, in particular to the growing social innovation community, innovation researchers more generally and to non-profit scholars. The practical relevance of the book will be of interest to European and national policy makers and practitioners across different sectors.
Social Innovation: Comparative Perspectives investigates socio-economic impact. Since it is hard to establish causality and to measure social properties when investigating impact, especially at the level of society, the book narrows down impact to one priority aspect: social innovation understood as organizations capacity to generate novel ideas, ways and means of doing things, of addressing public and social problems of many kinds.
This volumes primary assertion is that the Third Sector, specifically through stimulating civic involvement, is best placed to produce social innovation, outperforming business firms and state agencies in this regard. By investigating actor contributions to social innovation across seven fields of activity, Social innovation: Comparative Perspectives develops our understanding of why and how the Third Sector is central to functioning, cohesive and viable societies.
This volume is based on contributions of the project "ITSSOIN Impact of the Third Sector as Social Innovation" funded by the European Commission under the 7th framework programme. It will be of insight across disciplines, in particular to the growing social innovation community, innovation researchers more generally and to non-profit scholars. The practical relevance of the book will be of interest to European and national policy makers and practitioners across different sectors.
Social Innovation: Comparative Perspectives investigates socio-economic impact. Since it is hard to establish causality and to measure social properties when investigating impact, especially at the level of society, the book narrows down impact to one priority aspect: social innovation understood as organizations capacity to generate novel ideas, ways and means of doing things, of addressing public and social problems of many kinds.
This volumes primary assertion is that the Third Sector, specifically through stimulating civic involvement, is best placed to produce social innovation, outperforming business firms and state agencies in this regard. By investigating actor contributions to social innovation across seven fields of activity, Social innovation: Comparative Perspectives develops our understanding of why and how the Third Sector is central to functioning, cohesive and viable societies.
This volume is based on contributions of the project "ITSSOIN Impact of the Third Sector as Social Innovation" funded by the European Commission under the 7th framework programme. It will be of insight across disciplines, in particular to the growing social innovation community, innovation researchers more generally and to non-profit scholars. The practical relevance of the book will be of interest to European and national policy makers and practitioners across different sectors.