Session Information
32 SES 07 A, Social Innovation in Education. Part 1: Social Innovation as boundary work
Symposium to be continued in 32 SES 08 A
Contribution
Social Service Providers and Social Work Organizations across Europe face financial and regulatory challenges as well as new and changing needs. European social and economic policy suggest social innovation as adequate policy response to those needs and challenges. Social innovation means developing new ideas, services and models to better address social issues. (EU Commission 2018). Social innovation labs create space for experimentation and development of new services (Tiesinga & Berkhout 2014). From an educational perspective, they are also spaces of entrepreneurial learning in the field of social service provision. Based on two cooperative action research projects between universities and social service providers, the paper explores labs, which address employees of social service organizations as intrapreneurs (Schmitz/Schröer 2016). Participatory observation and data from qualitative interviews help to reconstruct these labs as opportunities for structural ambidexterity (O’Reilly/Tushman 2008), which allows for the support of learning as exploration and learning as exploitation (March 1991). While social service providers intend to create innovative social services, lab participants experience the tensions between exploration and exploitation, between entrepreneurial practices and management practices in social service organizations. The research seeks to identify practices to balance or integrate ambidextrous learning practices as a contribution discourses in organizational education and innovation management.
References
Harrison, R. T. and Leitch, C. M. (2005). 'Entrepreneurial Learning: Researching the Interface between Learning and the Entrepreneurial Context.' Entrepreneurship:Theory & Practice, 29 (4): 351-371. March, J. G. (1991): Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning. Organization Science. 2 (1), 71-87. O’Reilly, C.A. and M.L. Tushman (2008). Ambidexterity as a dynamic capability: Resolving the innovators dilemma. Research in Organizational Behavior, 28, 185-206. Schmitz, B. /Schröer, A. (2016): How giants learn to dance. Towards Conceptualizing the Social Intrapreneur. Arbeitspapiere aus der Evangelischen Hochschule Darmstadt Nr. 21 – Juli 2016]. Tiesinga, H., Berkhout, R. (2014). Labcraft: How innovation labs cultivate change through experimentation and collaboration. London & San Francisco: Labcraft Publishing.
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