Social innovation is becoming a core value of the EU flagship initiative Innovation Union, but it is not clearly demarcated as it covers a wide field of topics. To understand social innovation within European policymaking a brief outline is given of EC policy developments on innovation and on workplace innovation. Definitions of social innovation formulated at the societal level and the organizational or workplace level are discussed. Empirical research findings of workplace innovation in the Netherlands are presented as examples showing that workplace innovation activities boost organizational performance. The article explores the relation between workplace innovation and social innovation, and concludes that policy developments in the EU can be studied with the theory of social quality, provided that the latter in its empirical approach focuses on how individuals together constitute innovations.
Biographies
Peter R.A. Oeij (M.A., M.Sc.) is senior research scientist at TNO, NetherlandsOrganisation for Applied Scientific Research, and affiliated to the School of Management of the Open University of the Netherlands. He holds masters in history, sociology and psychology.Steven Dhondt (Ph.D.) has a doctoral degree in social sciences and is currently senior researcher at TNO, The Netherlands. He has been involved in many research projects in the field of social innovation and new workplace development. He has published several books on quality of work, social innovation, and the Information Society. Currently, he is managing a major TNO-programme on ways to develop co-creative, flexible, and learning organizations.Ton Korver (Ph.D.) is associate professor of HRM at the Hague University, The Netherlands. As an economist, he held previous positions at
Covenants are agreements between the government and social partners to implement public policy. They are a form of soft law, guiding the regulation of self-regulation, and are specifically relevant in bridging the macro and meso levels of society. Covenants prove effective where actors share goals, and learn to advance policy-making by monitoring efforts, effects and possible risks, and by subsequently fine-tuning follow-up actions. Positive-sum outcomes often result. We describe successful examples of this method of cooperation in the realm of working conditions and employment, and claim that covenants can be helpful in facilitating collective-bargaining framework agreements. In terms of EU policies, covenants are an instance of so-called European Governance Arrangements, the political and institutional foundations of which are still to be developed
Social rights were to be the completion of the citizenship status of all members within a political community. Th rough a variety of causes (their entanglement with the goals of full employment and the welfare state, the complexities of the political project of the European Union, and conceptual confusion) the development of these rights has been arrested. Th e article sketches some of the origins of the present predicament of (social) rights and (social) citizenship. Th e article is informed by the hope that the arguments it puts forward may contribute to a renewed discussion on the necessity and promises of an EU form of citizenship that is worth instituting and emulating.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.