1,720,990 research outputs found
Disentangling tech-enabled system change in social enterprises: an empirical exploration of Ashoka fellows
Get PDFPurpose: The complexity of contemporary societal challenges in emerging countries reanimates the necessity of collective action to resolve them. What is required is system change, namely, transformations in policy, practice, power relationships, market dynamics and social customs that underlie social and environmental issues. Technological innovations, paired with intentional social changes, might play a transformative role in this effort. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between the adoption of technologies in social enterprises (SEs) and their contribution to achieving system change. It also addresses the effects of their hybrid nature on this relationship. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis relied on data collected through a survey of the global population of Ashoka fellows, which is largely based in emerging economies. Three models were developed concerning different pathways to achieve system change identified in the theoretical framework. These were tested using Probit regressions. Findings: The investigation confirms that technology can support SEs in navigating complex pathways to achieve system change rather than merely enabling linear scaling operational strategies. The pursuit of economic value creation, in conjunction with a social mission, decreases the ability of SEs to achieve system change. This is because the scaling paths which hardly create revenues are neglected. Originality/value: The study conceptualises a multifaceted model of system change. It tests the framework empirically to show that SEs can adopt technologies to unleash complex system change processes to generate societal impact, on top of merely demonstrating linear approaches to scaling or replication. The paper questions the capacity of SEs to facilitate system change without appropriate financial support and the inherent tensions between hybridity and the depth of system change dynamics
An ecosystemic model for the technological development of social entrepreneurship: exploring clusters of social innovation
No full textSocial-tech enterprises are organizations that create social value by employing technological innovation as part of their value proposition. The complexity and the cross-institutional character which link technological innovation to social business models makes these organizations inherently ecosystemic in their necessity of developing dense interactions to enact their social and technologically innovative objectives. This paper investigates which ecosystem configurations can enable the technological development of social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the research analyses European clusters of social innovation to understand if clusters can represent a viable ecosystemic option to promote technology transfer and adoption by social enterprises. Results reveal that current social innovation clusters display peculiar features as the necessity of bilateral networking with specialized actors, the low weight attributed to physical proximity, and the scarcity and informality of technology transfer processes. These elements, which are not typically displayed by a traditional cluster model, suggest considering different ecosystemic strategies to actively promote the technological development of social enterprises or for reconceptualizing clusters towards a demand-side perspective. Despite such a claim, our evidence shows that specific cluster configurations involving openness, low specialization on social economy, high cognitive proximity and structured governance models may informally unleash the generation of jacobian externalities fostering technological development
Measuring a Blended Performance: Managerial Insights from the Field of Impact Entrepreneurship
Get PDF
Social Impact Bonds: Blockbuster or Flash in a Pan?
Get PDFDespite the general hype, Social Impact Bonds’ (SIB) rate of adoption is still modest. The mismatch between widespread interest and actual adoption raises interesting questions as to whether we are still in the early adoption phase of SIBs and massive diffusion is yet to come, or we are observing a marginal phenomenon. In order to shed some light on this issue, the paper provides a review of the cases in which the SIB model has been already applied, exploring the specific configuration employed, with the purpose to identify regular configuration patterns and their deviation from a prototypical structure
Unlocking finance for social tech start-ups: Is there a new opportunity space?
Get PDFThis paper performs a critical analysis of the financial instruments that can be employed to fund social innovation, with a specific focus on social tech start-ups that develop and deploy technology-driven solutions to address social needs in a financially sustainable manner. The paper analyses how these start-ups can access financing, the barriers to financing that these organisations experience and the financial instruments that are most suitable to address their financial needs. Social tech start-ups have many points of overlap with high-tech start-ups in terms of the barriers they encounter to financing in different lifecycle stages. Still, the institutional solutions that are commonly exploited by high-tech start-ups for growth are not enough to support social tech start-ups to scale. Therefore, we introduce the concept of SII and discuss its potential contribution to the social tech finance landscape. Then, using the case of social tech start-ups as paradigmatic of the broader problem of financing mechanisms for social innovation, we formulate a research agenda, including directions for research and theoretical development in the field of SII
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
- …
