Dilemmas for social innovators in relation to monitoring

We are living in a changing world. Next to changes in functional systems, welfare systems are being reformed, alternative currencies are gaining ground, companies are aiming for more than monetary value, and scientists engage... [ view full abstract ]

We are living in a changing world. Next to changes in functional systems, welfare systems are being reformed, alternative currencies are gaining ground, companies are aiming for more than monetary value, and scientists engage themselves with social causes by working with practitioners and civil action groups. When activities of work, welfare support, knowledge production and living get organised in different ways we speak of social innovation. Examples are neighbourhood restaurants, fablabs, timebanks, eco-villages and community-based care. By creating new relations and new ways of doing, thinking and framing, social innovations provide value for those involved and often also for society.
Social innovation initiatives generally cannot realize their transformative goals alone. There is a need for interacting with societal structures and formal institutions, which often requires that initiatives themselves go through a process of institutionalization and formalization. Such institutionalization is not without challenges (Pel et al., 2015).
At the moment the scope for certain social innovations to go to scale is high because there are shifts underway that favour their emergence as service providers. Another relevant development is experiments with new forms of social welfare provision and rules, such as incentives for welfare claimants to volunteer, experiments with basic income. In many cities we are seeing urban commons projects, reclaiming the city for the public good.
Monitoring for impact is a key concern for service commissioners but is also an internal concern for social innovation initiatives – especially for those with transformative ambitions. 
In this paper we will describe and examine dilemmas for social innovators in relation to monitoring and achieving wider (transformative) impact. This will be done through an empirically informed discussion of three tensions:
1. Internal struggle over growth and direction. This first tension is the internal struggle of an initiative between founders and leaders and other members of SII, over issues of growth and professionalisation. The transformative ambitions may not be commensurate with the members’ ambitions, causing conflict between leaders and between leaders and members. How to keep people (as the main resource of a SII) motivated? Without the grassroots there is nothing to lead, nothing to learn about/from and no social impact. 
2. Internal and external needs for monitoring. This tension relates to the misalignment between internal and external motivations, aspects and goals for monitoring. Funders (or governments) often desire the demonstration of social impact in return for funding. However, initiatives are not keen on spending time on those activities, do not have the necessary expertise or would rather focus the monitoring on different aspects.  They prefer to spend their scarce resources on making impact than on measuring it. Are there workable models that are not overly burdensome and make sense to all parties concerned? 
3. Co-option from imposed agendas.  When establishment actors set the agenda and expect the SIs to play along, they are creating problems of co-opting. An example is the UK government deciding to send thousands of people (benefit claimers, including migrants) to time-banks without providing appropriate resource. SI movements can split because agendas have been imposed top-down by (single-topic) agencies. What is needed is a genuine co-production process.    
The paper is based on research for the TRANSIT project, an EU funded project about transformative social innovation. In this project, 20 networks of social innovation are examined, with the aim of developing a middle-range theory of the mechanisms and conditions under which social innovation processes bring about transformative change. http://www.transitsocialinnova... 
The paper draws on case study analysis and a workshop on resourcing and monitoring bring together researchers and SI change leaders. The paper builds on and contributes to the literature on social innovation and solidarity economy (Westley, Moulaert, Laville, Haxeltine), social impact monitoring (Nicholls), the sociology of monitoring (Chiapello, Bruno) and the literature on the transformation of work and living (Sennett, Schor). Whereas the socio-technical literature on sustainability transitions emphasises the technologies of production, the present paper is concerned more with the level and structure of consumption and the need for meaningful forms of work and living fitting with immaterial needs. It sheds light on the potential of social innovations to contribute to transformative change by building complementary economies, reform of health and welfare, community and neighbourhood strengthening, skilling outside formal organisations and active citizenry.