Background
In the last years Social Innovation (SI) has been embraced by many politicians and policy makers despite it is an inspiring but weakly conceptualized concept. It aims to develop long-lasting outcomes which address societal needs by fundamentally changing the relationships, positions and rules between the involved stakeholders, via a process of open participation and collaboration. It implies that end users should be involved in the process of developing solutions. If SI concept itself is still weakly conceptualized, the internal mechanisms, of the actual implementation of a SI process, are still under-investigated. It is therefore important to deepen our understanding of this phenomenon.
Design/methodology
This paper specifically analyses, through a study case, the different interactions among the various involved actors aiming to show the relevance of some of the drivers and barriers, for the implementation of a SI scheme, as recently identified by Bekkers and Tummers (2016).
The unit of analysis has been the planning and implementation of the new Social Policy Plan in Abruzzo Region (Italy) seen as ‘comprehensive’ process of SI because it concerned: Administrative process innovation; Technological process innovation; Governance innovation; Conceptual innovation; Process innovation.
But the relevance of the unit of analysis is not so much in the case itself as for the relevance of the analysis that has been conducted. It has been possible to run a case study using qualitative research methods based on texts analysis (Bauer Gaskell, 2000) but, above all, on participatory observation (Jorgensen, 1989) in: 1) most of the internal working meetings in regional offices; 2) public presentations; 3) meetings of regional officials with specific categories (such as: representatives of trade unions; representatives of local TSOs’ umbrella associations, representatives of the association of the local municipalities of the region, etc.). There are also been talks with different local administrators of some municipalities of the region (having different political orientations) and talks with local civil servants as well as some talks with social operators.
Results/findings
Although the study has the great limit of being based only upon a single study case, it seems to be in line with the study of Bekkers and Tummers showing the relevance of six of the ten factors enucleated by them: Political and media pressure; Competition; Networks; Slack; Administrative culture; Performance expectancy. But above all the analysis showed the relevance and the controversy of the following issues as identified by OECD in 2010: electoral mandate, as conflicting with time, time as conflicting with several attempts, as well as the “counter-productivity” of communication as related with stakeholders expectancy
Antonucci__Venditti_Saying_and_doing.pdf 