Social Innovation in Civil Society Organizations

• In Event: The Eco-System of Third Sector Social Innovation

Abstract

The civil society exhibits twofold social innovation (i) consists of private organizations serving public aims and (ii) generates cooperation in competitive environments. The paper examines five clusters of 21 case-communities exemplifying broad array of civil society organizations. It explores why and how the volunteers’ communicative interactions improve life quality generating social and use value and facilitate agency through social innovations. How can the Homo economicus following self-interest simultaneously act as ‘person in community’? How voluntary cooperation can re-emerge and sustain in competitive and dominance seeking environment(s)?
The volunteers’ communicative interactions fulfil their multiple needs, including self-fulfillment, self-activation and self-transcendence (Maslow 1943), and in turn (re-)generate enhanced motivation to collaborate. Their short term (personal and team) needs can harmonize with longer term social interests, since they follow self-interest without generating dominance seeking competition. Multi-party, open ended, asymmetric, and asynchronous patterns of mutuality allow de-coupling voluntary contributions and the fulfilment of the contributors’ needs. The cooperation creates transformational dynamism - the capability to generate change, catalyze empowering individuation, and carry out social innovation and agency. This dynamism interplays with changes in institutional dimension, power relations, work, competition, value creation, and resourcing. It affects simultaneously (i) the individuals, (ii) the character and dynamism of their cooperative interactions, (iii) the very communities, and (iv.) their broader environment.
The institutional twin-primacy of non-zero-sum approach and interdependence, and the “modularity of contributions” (Benkler, 2011) enable to enact and share resources through the volunteers’ interactions. They enact soft resources - similar to creativity, information, knowledge, flow experience, relational, emotional, psychological, and cognitive energies – which are non-depletable and non-rivalrous therefore multipliable. The collaborative interactions aggregate into self-organizing emergence of communities, civil society entities unfolding without central planning or coordination. The capability to “organize without organization”(Shirky, 2008) facilitates to upgrade the complexity of cooperative efforts without enhancing organizational hierarchies.
The symbiotic capability co-creation enhances innovativeness and facilitates to improve the effectiveness of collective - following horizontal and decentralized patterns - resourcing, to extend and upgrade the resource base. The commoners’ self-communication creates their increasing awareness of interdependence and being ‘persons in community’. Their enhanced individual, team, and social consciousness facilitates collective learning, brings about increased openness toward social tendencies and toward issues which do not belong to their formal tasks. The cooperative efforts can co-crate social innovations, contribute to fulfil broader, also societal needs through enhanced social entrepreneurship, innovation and agency.

Author

• Jozsef Veress, Corvinus University Budapest