Social Innovation and Its Application

choose an existing organisation which has a community engagement focus and create a social innovation for their client group or you can develop an entirely new concept that you are passionate about. Discuss the principles and focus of community engagement as they relate to the relationship between business and marginalised or disadvantaged communities. evaluate the ethical and social responsibility of participants in business community organisations.

Social innovation is about the practice to promote collaborative, innovative action and creative thinking that should address the social needs. This must use the experience that should be concerned to bring up with approaches and new solutions. Social innovation is the practice of utilising creativity that can help to develop solutions that improve the well-being of the society and people (Voorberg et al. 2015). Social innovation aims to give a novel condition which should be effective, efficient and sustainable to provide value to the society, not just to the single individual.

In this study, Wesfarmers is selected as Wesfarmers provides community help to the subsidiaries. Wesfarmers has an impact on the society as the organisation always tries to meet the needs of the community with providing clothing, employment and they pay taxes to the government (Sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au 2018). Wesfarmers is going to come up with the concept of ‘social supermarket’ for the poor people to improve the poverty issue, employment issue, community infrastructure and community engagement in Merrylands, Sydney.    

Social innovations are new concepts, ideas and strategies for the organisations to meet the needs of the society of different elements that can be from education and working condition to community development and people’s health. As stated by Phillips et al. (2015), social innovation concept is associated with the social process of innovation, techniques, open source method and innovation which must have social purposes. Social innovation can be defined as the process of deploying and developing effective solutions to environmental and social issues supporting the social progress. Social innovation can be described in a way through which the people interact with the environment and these interactions are associated with the thinking and behaviour of the people (Cajaiba-Santana 2014).

In addition, a wicked problem is a cultural or social problem which is very difficult to solve for mainly four reasons, contradictory knowledge, different opinions are involved, large economic issues and interconnected nature of the problems. In society, poverty is connected with the education and poverty is also liked up with the nutrition. As opined by Calic & Mosakowski (2016), wicked problems do not have any definitive formulation and solutions to the wicked problems must be bad or good. There is no such template to follow to solve the wicked problems and there will always be more than one explanation for the wicked problems.  

Typology of Social Innovation

Social entrepreneurship is the process of growing and creating venture where the motivation of the entrepreneurs is to proceed with the social changes. In this situation, the entrepreneurs create the changes through the founding of the new organisations. According to Choi & Majumdar (2014), social entrepreneurship is the process of addressing all the social changes from the inside of the established firms and these types of entrepreneurs create changes by leveraging the capabilities and resources of the established organisation. In addition, social entrepreneurship can be described as the process of inter-organisational activities which must facilitate the alternative combinations of the people, ideas, resources and places to address the social changes. The social entrepreneurs can create the changes through platforms which support collective efforts between new and established organisations.

Typology of social innovation concept encompasses the systematic framework and it is applied in the evaluation of sustainability.

Socio-juridical innovation	It is the innovation of the laws and legal framework
Socio-analytical innovation	It is the innovation associated with the sense-making framework and analytical
Socio-ecological innovation	It is the innovation of the human interaction with the environment
Socio-economic evaluation	It is associated with the innovation of business models and economic models
Socio-technical innovation	This innovation is associated with the human and technological interaction
Socio-organisational innovation	This is innovation is associated with the innovation of organisational arrangement
Socio-cultural innovation	This innovation is related to the non-formal institutions and change is celebrated within the organisation
Socio-political innovation	It is an innovation of governance and political system
Socio-ideological innovation	This innovation is related to the ideological frameworks and the mindset paradigms
Socio-ethical innovation	It is the innovation of the ethical framework that deals with the normative frameworks

Table 1: Typology of social innovation

(Source: El Ebrashi 2013)

Social innovation can help the organisations to establish the values for the environment as well as the society to do the things in different ways; mainly for the civil society and the private sector.        

Wesfarmers is one of the largest organisations in Australia and it has several subsidiaries which are doing well in supermarket industry in Australia, Coles, Target and K-Mart. Wesfarmers has been providing support to the non-profit organisation as well. Wesfarmers earns 98% of the profit from Australia and it always wants to impact positively on the society. Wesfarmers makes community partnership so that the community gets supports from Wesfarmers. Wesfarmers believes that strong business situation is underpinned by inclusive and cohesive community environment (Sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au 2018). Wesfarmers has long-term community commitment that brings initiatives for both economic and social outcomes. Wesfarmers is thinking about to operate a ‘social supermarket’ in Merrylands, Australia. The western section of Merrylands is a poverty-stricken suburb in Australia and the government has been planning to improve the condition of this place through employing residential boom and employment. Wesfarmers is planning to start a ‘social supermarket’ in this place for the people who do not get proper food and the price of this food items and groceries will be lowest in entire Australia. Wesfarmers will take help from its subsidiaries K-Mart, Target and Coles to provide the low-cost products and home-based groceries to the poverty-stricken people. The supermarket will sell cheaper than the usual price to people receiving welfare payments and tax credits. In order to build up the social supermarkets, Wesfarmers will invest the money and it is asking the members of Coles, K-Mart and Target to pay $5 membership on weekly basis.

Social Entrepreneurship

This social supermarket will provide the cheaper price so that the customers can purchase a range of products including frozen foods, fresh products, dried fruits, vegetables and goods. The stock will be supplied from the nearby Coles, K-Mart and Target in the form of charities. This concept of the social supermarket will bring a smile in the faces of common poor people and they will get the products at cheaper than the usual price (Klindzic et al. 2016). In addition, Wesfarmers is thinking about to provide employment selecting the candidates from the poor section of Merrylands, Australia. These people get chance to build the skills, personal development and money management. Wesfarmers is selecting the plot to establish the social supermarket in Merrylands and this initiative will design to empower the customers, it will move the people out of food poverty and Wesfarmers is planning to track the food waste. This concept is different from the food bank and Wesfarmers is aiming to help the people to develop the emotional and social well-being of the common people. Wesfarmers will not make much profit from this venture; however, it will work as the corporate social responsibility of the organisation and it can increase the brand image of the organisation as well.

Social impact is the primary objective of the philanthropic investor and the investors plan to achieve to generate financial returns as a source of economic sufficiency for the investors. Social innovation can be interpreted as a potent force for leveraging social impact and social innovation is the experiment of doing the risks, the investors do have narrow financial expectations (Maric et al. 2015). Wesfarmers has to be aware of the dilemma and it can break the dilemma by expecting steady financial returns. This social supermarket will provide the products and good at cheap price; therefore, the organisation does not have any direct profit. Wesfarmers will try to recognise the financial performance of Target, Coles and K-Mart as this initiative will accelerate the brand value of the organisation. Merrylands people will be grateful to Wesfarmers as the organisation is trying to address the un-addressed needs. Financial returns will not be large as Wesfarmers will not keep any profit percentage from this shop and it will also provide employment opportunity to the common people. Using this social innovation, Wesfarmers can expand the supermarket subsidiaries in more regions.

Wesfarmers will not use any renewable resources as the energy. This social supermarket will use renewable power energy and it will recycle the water for later use. In addition, in front of the supermarket, Wesfarmers is thinking to plant a sapling. This garden will provide oxygen and shadow to the common people. This social supermarket will not emit any harmful gas as it is not a manufacturing centre. This social innovation is the plan to restore the eco-system and provide protection to the environment (Dowler & Lambie-Mumford 2015). The research team will look into the matter of food waste and the wastages of food packets and layers will be recycled. In addition, Wesfarmers will provide jute bag to the people to carry the items after purchasing as jute doe not harm the environment.

Case Study of Wesfarmers

Wesfarmers will follow the ethical framework as it stems from operational principles and the products of the ‘social supermarket’ will not harm the society. All products will be fresh and no product will cross the expiry dates. The organisation promises the people to provide best products at cheap price. The process of ‘social supermarket’ will be collaborative and partnership will be done with the people across the nearby areas (Dees 2017).

The social supermarket will assist to demonstrate to the residents about achieving the socio-economic development along with the physical regeneration of the Merrylands area. Social supermarket highlights benefits of healthy eating in the poorest section of Sydney. This social market will give the provision of giving subsidised products in cheap price and the aim of this social market is to provide a healthy diet to the people (Habibi et al. 2014). The rising issue of interconnectedness, inequality and the lowering level of faith among the community people can be solved through the social entrepreneurship process. 

According to Herrera (2015), social innovation cannot be conceived as the privilege of any legal structure or organisational and this type of innovation needs the partnership of business, non-profit organisations and governmental help. In recent times, maximum of the organisations are doing the innovation through the technologies, whereas the social innovation is social in nature. Innovation must emerge in the in the social realm of experienced reality and the social dimension comes from the human interaction. Wesfarmers can face the issue of communicating value objectively as the social enterprises need to deliver more than commercial values. The social value of Wesfarmers’ is to provide profit to the society and the bottom line of the organisation is to earn revenue. Wesfarmers can face the issue of selecting the ‘real’ poor people in the community as the strategy will be to make the membership to purchase the cheap goods from the supermarket. The long-term focus will be a challenge to the organisation as Wesfarmers needs to understand the unique value proposition of this social supermarket. It is very hard to true to the mission of social innovation as Wesfarmers might focus on profit making in a later stage. The successful organisation always reviews the strategy and it tries to improve this (Hollebeek et al. 2017). This social supermarket may face the difficulty of making the balance between diversification and revenue. The core ethics of the organisation are to implement the social entrepreneurship with correct planning. Wesfarmers needs to make a balance to deliver the commercial values. 

The ‘Social Supermarket’ Initiative

Conclusion

It has been observed that social innovation is the concept with the inter-sectoral approach and social innovation mainly focuses on the innovation that can help the society. There are many types of social innovation that the organisation can take to improve the condition with giving the priorities. In addition, social supermarket concept can be taken by Wesfarmers as this innovation will provide the cheap food to the poverty-stricken people in Merrylands. This innovation will provide cheap goods and it will also provide employment opportunity to the people. Wesfarmers will use this CSR activity as the part of the promotion and the customers base of the organisation will be increased through this

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