Social innovation during turbulent times: a systematic literature review and research agenda

Contemporary societies are affected by profound and often disruptive changes leading to socio-economic turbulence. The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of such changes. Gaining a deeper understanding of how society-based responses – such as social innovation – work during turbulent times is of increased significance. This paper carries out a systematically conducted literature review on the forms of social innovation arisen during the first year of the pandemic. Based upon our findings, areas for middle range theorizing on how social innovation works under conditions of turbulence and a prospective research agenda are explored

Institutionalizing Experimental Places for Inclusive Social Innovation: From Utopias to Heterotopias.

This essay embraces a notion of critical scholarship concerned with proposing normative and actionable alternatives that can create more inclusive societies and focuses on the role of institutionalizing experimental places for inclusive social innovation as a bottom-up strategic response to welfare state reforms. By mobilizing the notions of utopias and heterotopias in Foucault, the paper sheds light on the opportunity to move from policy utopias to democratic heterotopias, discussing the politics embedded in this cognitive shift and the democratic nature of social innovation changing social and governance relations by interacting with politico-administrative systems. Some obstacles to institutionalizing social innovation are highlighted, as well as some key governance mechanisms that can be activated either by public and/or social purpose organizations to try to overcome those obstacles. Finally, we discuss the importance of linking inclusive social innovation with democratic, rather than market logics

Negotiating autonomy in the public sector and nonprofits "collaborations" in politically contested fields

Nonprofits are increasingly involved in cross-sectoral collaborations with the public sector. However, we know little about the dynamics behind these collaborations and what happens to them in politically contested fields where actors may have divergent positions. In this article, a multi-country comparison of data gathered from semi-structured interviews (n = 68) with representatives of nonprofits involved in the labor market inclusion of newcomers is presented. Our findings indicate that, in politically contested fields, the possibility of participating in cross-sectoral collaborations (political autonomy) is influenced by nonprofits' financial and ideological autonomy. Welfare models and migration regimes play a fundamental role in shaping the inclusion of these organizations in collaborations, and in most cases, the collaborations are based on latent conflicts. Our article discusses that if the costs of autonomy associated with cross-sectoral collaborations are not offset, the collaboration in a politically contested field becomes a liability for nonprofits (and their beneficiaries)

Social enterprise and social entrepreneurship in the public administration (PA) scholar field: a bibliometric analysis and some conceptual considerations

Social enterprises have been mainly promoted by policy makers as effective and efficient public services producer and deliverer. At the same time, this contested concept has recently gained prominence in academic literature. This paper explores, through a bibliographic method, the state of studies on social entrepreneurship and social enterprise (SE) within the Public Administration (PA) field to identify scholarship-specific patterns of understanding and analysis of the role of SE from the public sector realm perspective. Our results highlight a community of 274 scholars contributing to 138 articles, with a rise in papers published since 2011. Through science mapping, we identified six research clusters. We then discuss three relationships between studies of SE and PA field: i) separation; ii) distinct cooperation; III) integration and transformation towards the public administration & management (PAM) field alongside suggesting a future research agenda for SE in the PAM field

The Public Sector and Co-Creation in Turbulent times: A Systematic Literature Review on Robust Governance in the Covid-19 emergency

The capacity of public sector of co-creating with other stakeholders is challenged by the increasing presence of disruptive turbulent events, such as the COVID-19. At this regard, robustness has been identified as a suitable response to deal with this kind of events. Through a systematic literature review, we analysed how public sector organisations have co-created with other actors during the COVID-19 and what have been the contribution of robust governance strategies. Our findings point firstly to the empirical validity of the robustness concept, providing evidence of the extensive use of robust governance strategies into the co-creation processes. Secondly, we identified a configurational approach to robustness, with governments co-creating by simultaneously employing several robust strategies. Thirdly, we observed a more active involvement of societal stakeholders, with emergence of proto-institutions and potential threats to the political system