Perspectives on the role of business in social innovation

Abstract

This article examines 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 missing. Design/methodology/approach We conducted an integrative review of the representative literature on social innovation. 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 our conceptualisation. Findings The 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.

On the Role of Faith in Sustainability Management: A Conceptual Model and Research Agenda

“…The most faithful individuals are those who make the other's point of view intrinsic to their own being (Kacela 2008). This element of faith development echoes a recent trend in corporate sustainability research conceiving of business actors as able to 'socialise' for shared value creation and sustainability-oriented innovation (Martinez et al 2017). The process relies on (formal 12 One may notably refer to the 'lean and mean' culture created by Jack Welch at General Electrics (Welch and Byrne 2001), the brutal downsizings and massive layoffs led by Albert Dunlap at Sunbeam (Byrne 1999), or the tendency of Donald Trump to lead his numerous business ventures with reliance on instincts and a putative inclination for the generation of profits at all costs (Trump and Schwartz 1989). and/or informal) socially constructed dynamics that can be created between businesses and their stakeholders for sustainability gains.…”

“…The emerging view is that of corporations as open systems with greater reliance on transparency, cocreation and dialogues with stakeholders such as employees, external partners, civil society organisations, suppliers, customers and competitors (Sai Manohar and Pandit 2014;Secchi 2007). Appropriation of the concept of open and social innovation by management scholars constitutes a major step within this trend (Martinez et al 2017). Interestingly, the creation of corporate vision and pro-sustainability value congruence across individual levels in the context of open innovation is often argued to require a leap of faith (e.g., Haugh and Talwar 2010;Mahoney et al 1994)-translating onto the development of a distinctively more inclusive mindset that determines the right (or ethical) course of action, particularly when operating under situations of uncertainty and ambiguity (Treviño et al 2000;Van den Steen 2005).…”

“…The (positive) relational aspects of faith that can be found in the cognitive process of socialisation are, however, rarely found in the business community (Kals and Maes 2012;Martinez et al 2017). As implied above, business managers are typically portrayed as dependent on experience, and imbued with reliance on rational decisionmaking processes based on cognitive ordering, structuring and determinism.…”

The Role of Social and Institutional Contexts in Social Innovations of Spanish Academic Spinoffs

“…It was in Europe in 1990 when the rise of research on this topic began, exponentially increasing its relevance at the beginning of 2000 [11,30,31]. This proliferation of studies has brought with it a multitude of definitions that have several elements in common but also differ significantly [32], in such a way that the term social innovation seems to mean different things to different authors [33]. In a strict sense, social innovation is defined as those "innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly diffused through organizations whose primary purposes are social" [34] (p. 146).…”

“…On the one hand, it is possible to find definitions of social innovation that refer either to the intention of the innovator or to the wider social consequences of the innovation beyond the confines of the innovating organization. Therefore, an innovation may be termed "social" if it produces good consequences that benefit a wide range of stakeholders in the society, although it is not motivated at root by the intention to solve a social problem [32]. In this vein, Adams et al [41] considers that the term "social" refers to the notion of sustainability-oriented innovations in which economic, social, and environmental considerations are integrated.…”