As we grapple with how to respond to some of the world’s most pressing problems, there is growing global interest in ‘social innovation’ as a potential solution. But what exactly is ‘social innovation’? And how can it help us to think about problems such as inequality, poverty and climate change?

Danielle Logue theorizes social innovation as a contemporary manifestation of the historical tensions between ‘economy’ and ‘society’ and the simultaneous pursuit of economic and social progress. Going back to the historical work of Adam Smith and his discussion of markets and morality, the author draws on organizational and management theory to present three theoretical lenses for understanding social innovation. These lenses include theorizing social innovation as social value creation, capture and distribution; social innovation as polysemous; and social innovation as institutional change. She then considers some of the current issues confronting social innovation in practice and the challenges for organizations in ‘doing good’ and ‘being good’.

This generative introduction is targeted at graduate and doctoral students, as well as non-specialist academics. It aims to stimulate further discussion and analysis by providing a comprehensive understanding of social innovation and a choice of frameworks when examining complex and wicked problems and the organization and management of efforts to solve them.

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Research Summary: Digital platforms offer a promising contemporary means for encouraging social innovation through cross-sector collaboration. Yet although such “social-mission platforms” are equipped to facilitate a high number of arms-length transactions, they are conversely ill-equipped to provide the necessary consensus which typically characterizes successful examples of cross-sector collaboration. Employing an in-depth archival case study of a civic crowdfunding platform, we surface a process model of social-mission platform creation, which exposes the dilemmas such platforms encounter as they attempt to navigate user growth, and the importance of institutional infrastructure for overcoming these dilemmas. These findings and our emergent model thus contribute new theory regarding the creation of digital platforms for enabling cross-sector collaboration and social innovation, while bridging the emerging body of research on platforms with institutional theory. Managerial Summary: Developing a digital platform for social good requires operators to maintain control over their mission as they grow, while working with actors from across sectors. While the economics of the platform may be clear, the social infrastructure to ensure effective and mission-aligned interaction between different segments of the platform needs to be developed. In our case study of a civic crowdfunding platform, we demonstrate how this platform strategically generates and promotes understandings of its boundaries, creates bridges between diverse stakeholders necessary for participation, and provides blueprints to shape and standardize platform interactions. We also discuss the potential susceptibility of social-mission platforms to experience mission drift as they grow, the existential threat that such drift poses in this context, and the ways that organizations might overcome this threat.

The concept of an institutional field is one of the cornerstones of institutional theory, and yet the concept has been stretched both theoretically and empirically, making consolidation of findings across multiple studies more difficult. In this article, we review the literature and analyze empirical studies of institutional fields to build scaffolding for the cumulation of research on institutional fields. We classify two types of fields: exchange and issue fields, and describe the populations that inhabit them. Subsequently, we develop a typology of field conditions based on two dimensions: the extent of elaboration of institutional infrastructure and the extent to which there is an agreed upon prioritization of logics. We discuss the implications of field types and conditions for isomorphism, agency, and field change, identifying six pathways of field change and the factors affecting them. We outline a research agenda based on our analysis highlighting the need for consolidation of field studies and identify several outstanding issues that are in need of further research.

This research paper aims to examine how open innovation (OI) intermediaries facilitate knowledge collaboration between organizations and online user communities. Drawing on a Community of Practice (CoP) perspective on knowledge, the study lays out a framework of the knowledge boundary management mechanisms (and associated practices) that intermediaries deploy in enabling client organizations to engage in online community-based OI.

In this paper we reflect on the question “what do we mean by teaching ‘business ethics’ at all?” In response we suggest that phronesis - a values-based disposition integrating practical and affective dimensions of practical knowledge - warrants consideration in addressing the topic of ethics but more broadly in legitimising university-based management education in the face of widespread public trust deficit in business and management education. In this paper we consider the Aristotelian origins of phronesis, including its distinctive connection to emotion and moral imagination, and apply a phronesis-based approach to postgraduate management education, providing illustrations of its practical usage. In doing so, we argue this goes beyond thinking of ‘business ethics’ as a stand-alone subject in business education, and instead provides management educators a framework within which to cultivate graduate capabilities in moral-relational judgement and a profession-like praxis. Doing so would help - post Global Financial Crisis - to ameliorate justifiable loss of public trust and confidence in university-based management qualifications.

As a social theory of organization, it is unsurprising that institutional theory draws upon the profound and ambitious work of the late anthropologist Mary Douglas. One of the foundational concepts of organizational institutionalism, institutional logics, directly draws upon her work. Yet, in recent times, this foundational role has faded from view as institutional theory itself becomes increasingly institutionalized as a vibrant branch of organization studies. This is unfortunate for there is much continuity in current work with that of Douglas, it now being 50 years and 30 years, respectively, since the publication of two of her formative works. The deep analogies that underpin classificatory systems and the processes by which they are sustained remain significant areas under continued investigation by institutional theorists. Thus, in this paper we revisit Douglas’ core arguments and their connections to institutional theorizing. We specifically explore her contribution of ‘naturalizing analogies’ as a way of accounting for the unfolding of change across levels of analysis, extending, modifying and enriching explanations of how institutional change is reified, naturalized and made meaningful. We do this by providing empirical descriptions of meta-organizing analogies and field-level applications. We explain how Douglas’ major theoretical works are of considerable relevance for current institutional theorizing. This aids particularly in informing accounts of institutional logics and the movement between individual cognition and collective signification.

Labels are important when organizations seek membership in an existing category, as are the agreed upon labeling practices of audiences that are already members of that category. The origins of labeling theory emerge from sociological examinations of deviant behavior and of deviant individuals. We return to this earlier emphasis and extend the analysis to organizations to demonstrate the contribution of a more politicized conception of labeling and categorizing for organization studies’ literature. In drawing upon two empirical illustrations, that of Wikileaks and News Corp’s The News of the World, we apply a “circuits of power” framework to analyze the politics of labeling. We suggest that a more politicized conception than offered in current literature highlights the moral reasoning, disciplining, and symbolic violence that may be invoked by labels and labeling practices and also the circuits of power by which they may be maintained and disrupted.

Rangan Srikhanta was a 21-year-old student at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), in Australia, when he first learned about the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) initiative. It was late 2005, and Nicholas Negroponte, then the director of the Media Lab at MIT, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan had just announced the launch of the program. OLPC, as they described it, was a partnership among private companies, NGOs, and governments to produce the world’s least expensive laptop and to

This article examines what governance innovations in top management team (TMT) composition diffuse more readily and globally than others, and what factors account for this varying global-local interplay. Governance innovations that are theorised (Strang and Meyer, 1993) in the corporate arena and supported by global activity such as industry associations, training and accreditation processes, flow earlier, faster and more broadly than those that are more loosely theorised and thus subject to more local variation (for example, finance positions compared to external facing positions). This varying global-local interplay results in hybrid TMTs, rather than the absolute displacement of traditional TMT compositional structures.

The mobility of scientists and the concerns surrounding `brain drain' are not new. Even in the Ptolemic dynasty, the first king set out to attract and influence the movements of scholars to shift the centre of learning from Athens to Alexandria. Yet after all this time, there is still much policy discourse and debate focused on attempting to define, redefine and solve this ancient problem. I argue that the continuing circularity of the debate supports the proposition that the policy issue of brain drain would value from being reconceptualised as a `wicked problem, in order to move policy forward. Drawing upon a historical documentary analysis of the issue from 1990 to 2007 and interviews with current policy-makers, I propose that reconceptualising this issue will enable actors to collectively and explicitly recognise the fundamental and conflicting perspectives inherent in this social problem that cannot be resolved. This reconceptualisation provides a platform from which policy-makers can pursue a range of policy responses, attentive to the different perspectives on this issue, rather than spend more time and resources in futilely attempting to achieve a single definitive position and policy response.

Innovation, and the understanding of processes of innovation, is fundamentally about social, scientific, and economic
change. Innovation is seen as underpinning the productivity and success of firms, communities, and nations. Innovation, as
a concept, is increasingly considered as a nonlinear multidimensional phenomenon, which involves a complex relational
ecosystem with concurrent processes of value cocreation through collaboration. Innovation can be understood on several
broad dimensions – product or process; technological or nontechnological; radical or incremental; and open or closed. The
article will explore these dimensions, the historical background to innovation, and current issues and challenges with
reference to developments in the social, scientific, engineering, and behavioral sciences, including the cross-disciplinary
linkages, which illuminate the nature and significance of innovation for the twenty-first century.

Global Themes and Local Variations in Organization and Management: Perspectives on Glocalization offers a broad exposition of the relations between the global and the local with regard to organizational and managerial ideas, practices, and forms. This edited volume forges ahead to capture the complexity of modern management and organization that results from the processes of glocalization. Universality is among the core underlying principles of the management of organizations, as well as of organization and management science itself. Yet, reality reveals enormous variation across social and cultural contexts. For instance, multinational corporations must adjust their management practices to adhere to national regulation and local standards; manufacturers and service providers routinely tailor their products to suit the local preferences of consumers; and non-profit organizations amend their advocacy agenda to appeal to local sentiments. The work assembled here goes beyond merely describing such patterns of variation and adaptation in organization and management; research and commentary engage directly with the tensions between homogeneity and heterogeneity, convergence and divergence, global and local. With contributions from leading scholars in the field of comparative organization studies, this collection offers a substantive contribution to the investigation of organization and management, as well as providing a valuable resource for students of organization studies, international business, and sociology.

Presentation with Albrecht Bluemel.

Co-authored with Dr Craig Rawlings, Stanford University.

This report investigates the viability of a range of portfolio interventions designed to leverage new sources of investment finance and to support the growth and investability of new businesses in the Indo-Pacific region, with a particular focus on the development of social enterprises. While some of these interventions are relatively new within the aid sector, others are designed to take a fresh perspective on an existing activity. The report sets out the findings for each of the interventions and while interventions were wide ranging, they all form key components of an entrepreneur’s journey and their ultimate participation in an impact investing marketplace. The study focused on the development of new businesses in the region and considers how early stage enterprises could be funded; how entrepreneurs (and particularly social entrepreneurs) could be incubated and supported to develop their business skills; how new financing structures could be deployed by government to attract more private investment into the sector; and the role of platforms in connecting enterprises and sources of capital in brokering deals.

Much of the hype around entrepreneurship today focuses on `hero entrepreneurs' the stereotypical image of Virgin founder Richard Branson and his extroverted, risk-taking personality. Yet this picture doesnt accurately reflect day-to-day life as an entrepreneur. It doesnt tell us about the way ideas are born or the networks, systems and skills not to mention plain luck on the road to success. The aim of this project was to provide insights into the entrepreneurial ecosystem by unmasking the day-to-day realities of being an entrepreneur in Australia today1. The research busts the myth that entrepreneurs succeed because of inherent personality traits because they are born that way. This research focuses instead on the impact of `incubators, the genesis of entrepreneurial ideas, the common patterns of learning and skill development, and the variety of pathways that can lead someone to being dubbed an entrepreneur. Encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship will be vital to the next wave of economic growth, now that the commodity prices boom is over2. We need a deeper understanding of the role of entrepreneurs in technological change and innovation, but as importantly, the realities of entrepreneurial life in Australia.

The Not-for-Profit (NFP) sector in Australia, and globally, is in transition. As the recognition grows that government and philanthropic funds are insufficient to address the problems facing societies globally, new organizational forms, partnerships, financial products and `impact investors are emerging and attempting to tackle existing problems in innovative ways. The space where this activity is occurring is increasingly labelled as the `social economy. In this space, the traditional NFP form is now just one organizational model in a spectrum of organizational forms and collaborations.

Ideas borrowed from the startup world – crowdfunding, incubators, accelerators and online marketplaces – could help close the US$2.5 trillion shortfall in funding for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Our research with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade shows these methods can increase aid by attracting funding from private investors and diaspora communities.