Abstract
Social innovation is an umbrella concept that allows space for a diverse range of perspectives to co-exist. In this paper, we explore how practitioners negotiate this complexity. Conducting 19 interviews with stakeholders involved in social enterprise and social care in Scotland, we show that almost anything can be conceived of as a social innovation as defined by the European Union. The EU definition can be a useful tool for organisations to demonstrate to funders how and why they are socially innovative. However, in failing to interrogate the power dimension of social innovation, the EU definition neglects any transformative potential.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2901-2920 |
| Journal | Public Management Review |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| Early online date | 20 Dec 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 02 Oct 2024 |
Keywords
- social innovation
- social care
- discourse
- social enterprise
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Business and International Management
- General Social Sciences
Access to Document
- Navigating the ‘meaningless’ of social innovation: perspectives of social care practitioners in Scotland
Copyright 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited.