title: Three essays on social innovation
Creators: name: Lu, Cheng
Publisher: name: The University of Edinburgh
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: social innovation
subject: social franchise
subject: social licensing
subject: Hybrid organizations
subject: impact investment
subject: social economy
subject: social entrepreneurship
subject: technology and information
subject: Collaborative governance
subject: collective impact
subject: cooperation
subject: cross-sector
subject: interdependence
subject: synergy
subject: Cause and effect
subject: disruption, complexity
subject: systems thinking
subject: ‘wicked’ problems

description: In numerous locations worldwide, social innovation is gaining momentum as a catalyst for solidarity and equality, propelling research and action toward creating a more inclusive society that benefits all. Despite growing scholarly interest, research in this area remains limited, lacking a comprehensive examination that captures the multi-dimensional, multi-scalar, and multi-sectoral nature of social innovation. This dissertation advances the theoretical and empirical understanding of social innovation by exploring its multiple dimensions and varying levels in different contexts. One key proposition underlying the work is that social innovation is not an isolated and static field, but is characterized by fluidity, processuality, and contextuality, and should thus be approached as such. The dissertation is composed of one theoretical study and two empirical studies. Paper Ⅰ (Chapter 3) attends to the cultural dimension of social innovation, exploring the dynamism of ideational-level changes through the lens of ‘imaginary’. Imaginaries are unifying ideals that reflect social reality and are thought to influence thinking and practices. While imaginaries have gained attention in organization studies, especially as they relate to social innovation, little is known about how they emerge. In this paper, we examine the field of social impact as a series of juxtaposed imaginaries and specifically focus on the emergence of a systems change imaginary. Building upon the approach of Cultural Political Economy, we develop a framework involving three dynamics – contextual pressures, discursive interactions, and material incentives – that give rise to the emergence of new imaginaries. We further demonstrate how these dynamics operate and function through the illustrative case of systems change. This paper contributes to the literature on imaginaries and enables a deeper understanding of systems change as a discourse of social innovation. Paper Ⅱ (Chapter 4) attends to the socio-political dimension of social innovation, investigating the field-level formation and changes by drawing upon the fundamentals of institutional theory. Nascent fields emerge from complex socio-political struggles in which the government plays a crucial role, but prior research lacks a processual understanding of their roles and how this may impact field formation in the longer term. This article explores the roles of the government in the context of China’s social entrepreneurship sector from 2004 to 2021. The analysis shows that the government presents multifaceted roles in the field emergence processes, which are influenced by the field circumstances and specific political ends. Further, this paper reveals how local authorities dominate and intervene in the nascent field, due to the detachment of the central government, using approaches reflecting their respective socio-cultural backgrounds. This research enriches the literature on field emergence and change by providing processual political interpretations and contributes to understanding the emergence of the social entrepreneurship market in non-Western institutional environments. Paper Ⅲ (Chapter 5) attends to the economic dimension of social innovation, examining organizational elements and development based on the perspective of corporate social innovation (CSI). CSI refers to companies taking novel socially relevant actions to generate economic and social benefits concurrently. Despite its growing recognition, CSI remains underexplored within both the fields of social innovation and corporate social responsibility. This study examines how a vanguard company – SK Group – effectively integrates CSI initiatives into its business strategies and management, and identifies three crucial components of CSI development: social innovation intention, repertoire, and operational mechanism. A proposed theoretical model explains how companies could progress their CSI efforts through the dynamic interplay of these components, facilitated by a few mediating factors. The research contributes to a systematic understanding of the organizational aspects of CSI and provides empirical evidence for successful CSI practices in different settings. Taken together, the dissertation offers a systematic overview of social innovation, highlighting its boundary-blurring and emancipatory intent. Theoretically, it contributes to a multi-layered conceptualization of social innovation by illuminating its cultural, socio-political, and economic dimensions, drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives such as cultural studies, political science, and management and organizational studies. Empirically, this work focuses on three cutting-edge social innovation phenomena – systems change, social entrepreneurship, and corporate social innovation, uncovering cross-sectoral insights and illustrating the role of diverse agents in driving social change across contexts. Practically, this dissertation builds up a knowledge repository that serves as a resource for researchers, social innovators, and policy-makers, opening up avenues to harness the potential of social innovation for greater discourse, policy, and strategy change.