The Role of Inclusive Innovation in Promoting Social Sustainability

Abstract

This special issue implores us to address sustainability from the lens of emerging economies and the role that innovation can play in this context. We posit that, for sustainable operations research to be relevant in the context of emerging economies, it needs to incorporate social concerns and conditions of underserved populations, with an emphasis on inclusion and equity. Especially important for addressing social concerns of these populations will be product/service innovation, process/business model innovation, and supply chain innovation. We further posit that successful innovation in these areas will require collaboration of for‐profit firms with the public sector, civil society organizations, and communities. In thisstudy, we put forward “inclusive innovation” as a unifying approach that enables the collaborative integration of social issues of relevance to underserved populations in operations management decisions. We then focus on contemporary sectoral challenges in services, manufacturing, and agriculture, highlight the relevant social sustainability issues with an emphasis on those relevant to underserved populations, and point to new opportunities for research.

Where Does CSR Come from and Where Does It Go? A Review of the State of the Art

“…Studies can be divided into two large groups depending on the unilateral or bidirectional nature of the relationship between CSR and innovation. The first group includes those studies that maintain that CSR policies influence innovation (Halkos and Skouloudis 2018) or that the company's capacity for innovation is a necessary organizational factor for the implementation of CSR (Kalkanci et al 2019;Zeimers et al 2019). The second group considers the existence of a bilateral relationship between both variables, i.e., innovation and CSR would influence each other (Gallego-Álvarez et al 2011;González-Ramos et al 2014;Rexhepi et al 2013).…”

Alleviating Poverty by Empowering Women Through Business Model Innovation: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Insights and Opportunities

“…We cite just a few of those papers here. OM researchers have published conceptual frameworks for innovating business models (e.g., London et al 2010, London and Anupindi 2012, Ramdas et al 2012, Girotra and Netessine 2014, Cachon 2019, for increasing adoption of radical business models (Ramdas and Darzi 2017), and for exploring new research opportunities (Sodhi and Tang 2014, Lee and Tang 2017, Kalkanci et al 2018, Swaminathan 2018. Frameworks such as these highlight challenges in poverty alleviation and opportunities to use innovative business-model thinking to overcome them.…”

“…Most exciting to us is the untapped opportunity to focus on women as engines for poverty alleviation. Targeting women for inclusive innovation is crucial (Kalkanci et al 2018). Focusing on the specific opportunities, challenges, and perspectives of women in developing economies opens new avenues for OM research.…”

“…Our focus in this article is on operations management (OM)-inspired classes of business model innovation that help the poor in all three ways and especially help women. Empowering women is crucial for poverty alleviation, because women more than men invest their earnings into education of their children and family health (Duflo 2012, Kalkanci et al 2018. In many impoverished parts of the world, women lack access to education, information, financing, mobility, and the best jobs.…”

“…In many impoverished parts of the world, women lack access to education, information, financing, mobility, and the best jobs. Kalkanci et al (2018) discuss innovation through inclusion, particularly of women; please read their article before the remainder of this one.…”