The construction of social innovation and undesirable consequences of innovation – a critical reading of the European Union’s social innovation policy

This paper examines the social construction of social innovation in the European Union (EU) context, with a particular focus on how unintended and undesirable consequences of social innovation are addressed within this context. A wide range of meanings have been attributed to social innovation. It is not rare to read that social innovation is a relatively new field of research and policy (for example, European Commission, 2010) or even a buzzword (Pol and Ville, 2009). Pol and Ville (2009, 878) argue: „The term “social innovation” has entered the discourse of social scientists with particular speed, but there is no consensus regarding its relevance or specific meaning in the social sciences and humanities‟. In this paper we do not adopt any of the definitions listed above as a starting point. Instead we draw on a social constructionist stance and are interested in exploring how meanings around social innovation are constructed in and through EU policy documents and websites. This paper does not argue that the foremost consequences of innovation are negative and undesirable: there are numerous examples of how innovation has improved the well-being of many social actors and groups. Nonetheless, there seems to be a call for more studies focusing on the previously relatively unexplored unintended and undesirable consequences of innovation in order to create more efficient social innovation policy design, implementation and evaluation. [Extracted from authors’ introduction].

Citation

Segercrantz, Beata and Seeck, Hannele (2013) The construction of social innovation and undesirable consequences of innovation – a critical reading of the European Union’s social innovation policy (Oral presentation 2013 EU-SPRI Forum Conference, Madrid 10-12 April 2013).