IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/b/wfo/wstudy/58500.html
   My bibliography  Save this book

Corporate Social Innovation as a Driver of Performance and Welfare. WWWforEurope Policy Paper No. 25

Author

Listed:
  • Susanna Ulinski

    (Austrian Institute of Economic Research)

Abstract

Social innovation is booming as a political buzzword. However, the concept still lacks scientific analysis, a common epistemology and a clear-cut definition. This paper takes a step towards a better theoretical and conceptual understanding of corporate social innovation by detaching the concept from the government and NPO sector. It suggests defining social innovation by its social means and social ends. The term "social" not only refers to the non-material nature of innovation and its social process that modifies social practices, behaviour and relationships, but also relates to the achievement of socially desirable ends. The means and ends for corporate social innovation are further analysed in three case studies on car-sharing, fair trade and diversity management of a multi-ethnic workforce. The analysis also shows that for-profit companies not only play an important role in the advancement of social innovations, but also that social innovations constitute a business opportunity. Moreover, the characteristics of (corporate) social innovations offer our society and economy the dynamics to adapt to social challenges in a complex environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Susanna Ulinski, 2015. "Corporate Social Innovation as a Driver of Performance and Welfare. WWWforEurope Policy Paper No. 25," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58500, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:wfo:wstudy:58500
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wifo.ac.at/wwa/pubid/58500
    File Function: abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heike Jacobsen & Milena Jostmeier, 2012. "What Is Social About Service Innovation? Contributions of Research on Social Innovation to Understanding Service Innovation," Springer Books, in: Hans-Werner Franz & Josef Hochgerner & Jürgen Howaldt (ed.), Challenge Social Innovation, edition 127, pages 107-118, Springer.
    2. Bradley Googins, 2013. "Leading with Innovation: Transforming Corporate Social Responsibility," CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance, in: Thomas Osburg & René Schmidpeter (ed.), Social Innovation, edition 127, pages 89-98, Springer.
    3. Philippe Aghion, 2005. "Growth and Institutions," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 3-18, March.
    4. Herrera, Maria Elena Baltazar, 2015. "Creating competitive advantage by institutionalizing corporate social innovation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1468-1474.
    5. Martin, Elliot & Shaheen, Susan Alison & Lidicker, Jeffrey, 2010. "Carsharing’S Impact On Household Vehicle Holdings: Results From A North American Shared-Use Vehicle Survey," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt0850h6r5, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    6. G. M.P. Swann, 2009. "The Economics of Innovation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13211.
    7. Karl Aiginger, 2014. "Industrial Policy for a Sustainable Growth Path. WWWforEurope Policy Paper No. 13," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47261, April.
    8. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A., 2005. "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 385-472, Elsevier.
    9. Dani Rodrik, 2007. "Introductiion to One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth," Introductory Chapters, in: One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth, Princeton University Press.
    10. Martin, Elliot & Shaheen, Susan A & Lidicker, Jeffrey, 2010. "Impact of Carsharing on Household Vehicle Holdings: Resultsvfrom a North American Shared-Use Vehicle Survey," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt3bn9n6pq, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    11. Martin, Elliot & Shaheen, Susan Alison & Lidicker, Jeffrey, 2010. "Carsharing’S Impact On Household Vehicle Holdings: Results From A North American Shared-Use Vehicle Survey," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt0850h6r5, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    12. Cajaiba-Santana, Giovany, 2014. "Social innovation: Moving the field forward. A conceptual framework," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 42-51.
    13. Jürgen Howaldt & Ralf Kopp, 2012. "Shaping Social Innovation by Social Research," Springer Books, in: Hans-Werner Franz & Josef Hochgerner & Jürgen Howaldt (ed.), Challenge Social Innovation, edition 127, pages 43-55, Springer.
    14. Karl Aiginger, 2012. "A Systemic Industrial Policy to Pave a New Growth Path for Europe," WIFO Working Papers 421, WIFO.
    15. Fagerberg, Jan & Mowery, David C. & Nelson, Richard R. (ed.), 2006. "The Oxford Handbook of Innovation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199286805.
    16. Gillwald, Katrin, 2000. "Konzepte sozialer Innovation," Papers, Research Network Project "Work and Ecology" P 00-519, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    17. Frank Pot & Fietje Vaas, 2008. "Social innovation, the new challenge for Europe," International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 57(6), pages 468-473, July.
    18. Shaheen, Susan A & Cohen, Adam P, 2007. "Growth in Worldwide Carsharing: An International Comparison," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt2zv240pp, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    19. Pol, Eduardo & Ville, Simon, 2009. "Social innovation: Buzz word or enduring term?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 878-885, December.
    20. Andreas Reinstaller, 2013. "An Evolutionary View on Social Innovation and the Process of Economic Change. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 43," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47018, April.
    21. Franke, Sassa, 2001. "Car sharing: vom Ökoprojekt zur Dienstleistung," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 122926, July.
    22. Moses Abramovitz, 1956. "Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number abra56-1, March.
    23. Robert G. Eccles & Ioannis Ioannou & George Serafeim, 2014. "The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(11), pages 2835-2857, November.
    24. Loraine Ronchi, 2002. "The Impact of Fair Trade on Producers and Their Organisations: A Case Study with Coocafé in Costa Rica," PRUS Working Papers 11, Poverty Research Unit at Sussex, University of Sussex.
    25. Dirk Dohse & Robert Gold, 2014. "Determining the Impact of Cultural Diversity on Regional Economies in Europe. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 58," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47204, April.
    26. Moses Abramovitz, 1956. "Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870," NBER Chapters, in: Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870, pages 1-23, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    27. Fagerberg, Jan & Srholec, Martin & Verspagen, Bart, 2010. "Innovation and Economic Development," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 833-872, Elsevier.
    28. Dirk Dohse & Robert Gold, 2014. "Cultural Diversity and Economic Policy. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 64," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47494, February.
    29. Geoff Mulgan, 2012. "Social Innovation Theories: Can Theory Catch Up with Practice?," Springer Books, in: Hans-Werner Franz & Josef Hochgerner & Jürgen Howaldt (ed.), Challenge Social Innovation, edition 127, pages 19-42, Springer.
    30. Karl Aiginger, 2014. "Industrial Policy for a Sustainable Growth Path," WIFO Working Papers 469, WIFO.
    31. Karl Aiginger & Susanne Bärenthaler-Sieber & Johanna Vogel, 2013. "Competitiveness under New Perspectives. WWWforEurope Working Paper No. 44," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47019, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nazari, Mohsen, 2022. "The journey from Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Innovation: The Whys and the Hows," Technium Business and Management, Technium Science, vol. 2(2), pages 27-39.
    2. Karl Aiginger, 2016. "New Dynamics for Europe: Reaping the Benefits of Socio-ecological Transition – Part I: Synthesis. WWWforEurope Deliverable No. 11," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58791, February.
    3. repec:thr:techub:v:2:y:2022:i:2:p:27-39 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edwards-Schachter,Mónica & Wallace,Matthew, 2015. "âShaken, but not stirredâ: six decades defining social innovation," INGENIO (CSIC-UPV) Working Paper Series 201504, INGENIO (CSIC-UPV).
    2. Georg Licht & Bettina Peters & Christian Köhler & Franz Schwiebacher, 2014. "The Potential Contribution of Innovation Systems to Socio-Ecological Transition. WWWforEurope Deliverable No. 4," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 47502, February.
    3. Pedro Marques & Kevin Morgan & Ranald Richardson, 2018. "Social innovation in question: The theoretical and practical implications of a contested concept," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(3), pages 496-512, May.
    4. Duarte N. Leite & Sandra T. Silva & Oscar Afonso, 2014. "Institutions, Economics And The Development Quest," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(3), pages 491-515, July.
    5. Golalikhani, Masoud & Oliveira, Beatriz Brito & Carravilla, Maria Antónia & Oliveira, José Fernando & Antunes, António Pais, 2021. "Carsharing: A review of academic literature and business practices toward an integrated decision-support framework," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    6. Tachia Chin & Yin Yang & Pei Zhang & Xiaofen Yu & Luying Cao, 2019. "Co-creation of Social Innovation: Corporate Universities as Innovative Strategies for Chinese Firms to Engage with Society," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-13, March.
    7. Susan Shaheen & Nelson Chan & Helen Micheaux, 2015. "One-way carsharing’s evolution and operator perspectives from the Americas," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 519-536, May.
    8. Diana, Marco & Chicco, Andrea, 2022. "The spatial reconfiguration of parking demand due to car sharing diffusion: a simulated scenario for the cities of Milan and Turin (Italy)," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    9. Irfan Ullah & Kai Liu & Tran Vanduy, 2019. "Examining Travelers’ Acceptance towards Car Sharing Systems—Peshawar City, Pakistan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-16, February.
    10. Xiaowei Chen & Hongyu Zheng & Ze Wang & Xiqun Chen, 2021. "Exploring impacts of on-demand ridesplitting on mobility via real-world ridesourcing data and questionnaires," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(4), pages 1541-1561, August.
    11. Yoon-Young Chun & Mitsutaka Matsumoto & Kiyotaka Tahara & Kenichiro Chinen & Hideki Endo, 2019. "Exploring Factors Affecting Car Sharing Use Intention in the Southeast-Asia Region: A Case Study in Java, Indonesia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(18), pages 1-26, September.
    12. David Bailey & Lisa de Propris & Jürgen Janger, 2015. "Industrial and Innovation Policy as Drivers of Change. WWWforEurope Deliverable No. 9," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58412, April.
    13. Cartenì, Armando & Cascetta, Ennio & de Luca, Stefano, 2016. "A random utility model for park & carsharing services and the pure preference for electric vehicles," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 49-59.
    14. Nadine Gatzert & Katrin Osterrieder, 2020. "The future of mobility and its impact on the automobile insurance industry," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 31-51, March.
    15. Pierpaolo D’Urso & Alessio Guandalini & Francesca Romana Mallamaci & Vincenzina Vitale & Laura Bocci, 2021. "To Share or not to Share? Determinants of Sharing Mobility in Italy," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 647-692, April.
    16. Zhang, Yu & Li, Leiming, 2022. "Research on travelers’ transportation mode choice between carsharing and private cars based on the logit dynamic evolutionary game model," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 29(C).
    17. Hadi Charkhgard & Mahdi Takalloo & Zulqarnain Haider, 2020. "Bi-objective autonomous vehicle repositioning problem with travel time uncertainty," 4OR, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 477-505, December.
    18. Holmström Lind, Christine & Kang, Olivia & Ljung, Anna & Rosenbaum, Paul, 2022. "Involvement of multinational corporations in social innovation: Exploring an emerging phenomenon," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 207-221.
    19. Karl Aiginger, 2016. "New Dynamics for Europe: Reaping the Benefits of Socio-ecological Transition – Part I: Synthesis. WWWforEurope Deliverable No. 11," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 58791, February.
    20. Edinaldo Tebaldi, 2016. "The Dynamics of Total Factor Productivity and Institutions," Journal of Economic Development, Chung-Ang Unviersity, Department of Economics, vol. 41(4), pages 1-25, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wfo:wstudy:58500. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Florian Mayr (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wifooat.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.