Semantic Shift of Social Innovation Term

Social innovation (SI) is not a new term - early usage can be traced to the beginning of the 20th Century in conjunction with the slave trade – however the concept has become particularly popular over the last decade,... [ view full abstract ]

Social innovation (SI) is not a new term - early usage can be traced to the beginning of the 20th Century in conjunction with the slave trade – however the concept has become particularly popular over the last decade, gaining attention from policy makers, academics, practitioners, and the general public (Nicholls/Murdock 2012). However social innovation remains a contested concept which while widely used, is not consistently applied (Dey and Teasdale, 2013). The multiple meanings of the term have implications beyond academia. Coming from Malaysia I was struck by policy claims that social innovation can seemingly serve as a panacea to social problems which can simultaneously aid both social and economic development (Arukesamy, 2014). I thus set out to explore the multiple meanings of social innovation in academic literature and how these have evolved over time.

To achieve this I utilized Publish or Perish Software developed by Harzing (2007) to identify from Google Scholar the highest cited papers since 1989. I selected all papers with social innovation in the title and calculated the h-index for these. After removing duplicates I was left with 56 papers cited 56 or more times to analyse in more detail. After reading each paper I identified how they used the term “social innovation” using content analysis. Four broad themes were inductively developed from my analysis: social movement; social relations; societal impact and technological innovation. Each paper was then classified into one of the four main themes, or more usually, into two or more themes.

This enables me to show that 25 years ago the term social innovation was not widely used, and where it was used this was almost accidental rather than as a concept. Over time two broad approaches to social innovation developed: as a form of technological innovation, and / or as new forms of social relationships. In both cases this usage was usually combined with a focus on achieving societal impact / social change. Over the last 10-15 years it is possible to identify a clear pattern emerging in the literature whereby most of the highly cited papers focus on social innovation as incorporating new forms of social relations which achieve societal impact. Many of these papers focus on welfare reform, and particularly on moving beyond an old / traditional welfare state model whereby nation states protect citizens towards a model whereby state and civil society are partners in developing new ideas AND in delivering new solutions to social problems. From a developing country perspective this is particularly interesting given the focus on social innovation as a means of bypassing old / traditional welfare state models and moving straight to a social innovation model, not least because many of these developing countries do not yet have a strong civil society OR states accustomed to opening up the planning and delivery of welfare to citizen involvement.