Maturity Assessment Tool for Social Innovation Environments. Assessing Work Environments that Harvest Social Innovation.

• In Event: Evaluating social enterprise and social innovation

Abstract

Social innovation, defined as “innovative activities and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and that are predominantly diffused through organizations whose primary purposes are social” (Mulgan 2006: 146), has gained attention in recent years within the academic debate and among policymakers (for an overview, see c.f. Anheier et al. 2018). These contributions have mainly focused on showing the benefits of social innovation for individuals, organizations, and society at large. Against that background, a commonly made recommendation for managers and policymakers focusses on their responsibility to enable more and better social innovation (e.g., Seelos and Mair 2013). However, while ‘more and better social innovation’ is a recommendation easily made, it remains less straightforward to pinpoint concrete actions about how to create an organizational work environment that is beneficial for enabling such social innovation.
To fill this gap, we elaborate the concept of social innovation environments, and we empirically test a Maturity Assessment Tool for the Social Innovation Environment (MAT*SIE) within organizations. Maturity frameworks – and related assessment tools – are a common and often-used approach in strategic management to collect in an efficient way information to assess strengths and weaknesses of an organizational unit (e.g. Hammer 2007). This can in turn lead to a more straightforward formulation of strategic actions that are aimed to improve the overall effectiveness of an organization. Commonly, such a maturity framework defines a set of dimensions that together constitute the building blocks for a holistic evaluation about the organization.
For the development of MAT*SIE, we considered four criteria, namely (1) multi-dimensionality, (2) action-ability, (3) assessment efficiency, and (4) being broadly applicable, which we elaborate in our article. To exemplify the multi-dimensionality criterion: we have conducted a holistic literature review, focusing on the broadness of various relevant factors (rather than on the depth of one or a few factors). Sixty indicators in fifteen subdimensions, in turn nested in five overall dimensions constitute the MAT*SIE, identifying the factors that relate to social innovation environments. To give a short account, in total we have identified the following five dimensions from literature: (1) Work Social Capital, (2) Infrastructure, (3) Continuous Improvement, (4) Autonomy, and (5) Outward Orientation.
In our article, we also draw on first empirical insights from applying MAT*SIE to fifteen nonprofit organizations, from which a manager took part in an Executive Master Program on Social Innovation in continental Europe, which resulted in 250 responses. For validation purposes, we have also added other constructs in the survey, such as organizational level constructs (e.g. organizational effectiveness; Willems, Jegers and Faulk 2016) and individual level constructs (e.g. turnover intention), willingness to recommend one’s job (adapted from Cable and Judge 1996) or prosocial impact and societal impact (adapted from Grant 2008). By applying multivariate analysis for the newly developed MAT*SIE dimensions with these existing constructs, we document the discriminant and predictive validity of the MAT*SIE. We discuss our findings, and postulate how the use of MAT*SIE enables a plethora of future research avenues.

References

Anheier, Helmut, Gorgi Krlev, and Georg Mildenberger. Social innovation: Comparative perspectives. Routledge (2018).
Cable, Daniel M., and Timothy A. Judge. "Person–organization fit, job choice decisions, and organizational entry." Organizational behavior and human decision processes 67.3 (1996): 294-311.
Grant, Adam M. "Relational job design and the motivation to make a prosocial difference." Academy of management review 32.2 (2007): 393-417.
Hammer, Michael. "The process audit." Harvard business review 85.4 (2007): 111.
Mulgan, Geoff. "The process of social innovation." innovations 1.2 (2006): 145-162.
Seelos, Christian, and Johanna Mair. "Innovate and scale: A tough balancing act." Stanford Social Innovation Review 11 (2013): 12-14.
Willems, Jurgen, Marc Jegers, and Lewis Faulk. "Organizational effectiveness reputation in the nonprofit sector." Public Performance & Management Review 39.2 (2016): 454-475.

Authors

• Reinhard Millner, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business

• Carolin Waldner, ESCP Business School

• Jurgen Willems, Vienna University of Economics and Business