Suchergebnisse

This article describes a collaborative writing strategy when you are alone. It is the story of how I came to bring Phineas, the protagonist in A. S. Byatt's The Biographer's Tale, into my writing process as a third voice in my dialogue with my data. It is a self-reflective text that shows how co-writers are always present, even when you might feel that you are writing all alone. In The Biographer's Tale, the academic Phineas renounces his post-structural dissertation project in literature to search for "things" and "facts." He decides to write a biography. However, Phineas discovers that "facts" are slippery and not easily "pieced together." Phineas writes about his struggles, and so do I. Through co-writing with Phineas, I gradually found a voice of experience, which helped me to transforming my ethnographic data into research texts.

Innovationsbegrebet er centralt i debatten om fremtidens velfærdssamfund, og innovation fremstår nu som et imperativ for både samfund og arbejdspladser. Men hvad betyder innovation i en offentlig kontekst egentlig, og hvilken betydning har innovationsimperativet for aktører i deres daglige praksis på offentlige arbejdspladser? Fra et empirisk perspektiv udfolder artiklen en begrebsanalyse af innovation og viser, hvordan innovationsbegrebets betydninger skabes gennem lokale aktørers diskurser. Fra et demokratiseringsperspektiv argumenteres efterfølgende for, at lokale aktørers perspektiver på innovation skal ses som en konstruktiv ressource, der kan bidrage til bæredygtig udvikling i praksis.


ENGELSK ABSTRACT:

Charlotte Wegener: Does Innovation Discourse Restrict Innovation?

The elder care sector in Denmark is one of the main welfare state areas in which innovation is on the agenda. Economic constraints, demographic changes including more elderly and reduced budgets are the arguments advanced by politicians and public opinions leaders for adopting a radically new way of thinking. If this does not happen, they argue, quality and ethics – and consequently citizens and staff – will suffer unnecessarily. The solution promulgated is innovation. This article investigates the ways in which the innovation discourse unfolds on the practice-based level – among students and staff in the elder care sector and at the social and health care college, which trains care workers. It examines the discourses among employees, managers and students who are supposed to be innovative and take part in implementation of innovative changes within their organization or in cross-organizational collaboration in social and health care and education. It asks whether innovation discourse facilitates innovation. The article concludes that the actors are engaged in the concept of innovation; however, there is a tendency to invest this engagement into producing more discourse. Meanwhile changes in the social sector proceed in parallel processes with no interaction with, or even in opposition to the innovation discourse.

Key words: Public innovation, discourse, social actors, the social and health care sector.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce 'upcycling' – a well-known term within design practice – to the field of social innovation. A mix between 'upgrading' (adding value) and 'recycling' (reusing) creates the word upcycling, which, in its simplest terms, is the practice of reassessing waste and transforming it into something valuable. In this paper, we ask: How does an upcycle mind-set and practice contribute to situated social innovation?
This conceptual paper seeks to combine insights from the fields of social innovation and co-design with the ideas inherent in upcycling. To ground the theorizing of what we term 'social upcycling', four cases are used to illustrate what upcycling practices look like. The cases illustrate the diversity of actors, activities and materiality involved in social upcycling processes. Concluding, the paper outlines a new promising area of social innovation and some practical implications.

"This is a story about the creation of a co-authored research article. The purpose is to emphasize co-writing as a significant pedagogic practice within doctoral supervision. Regarding apprenticeship as a pedagogical methodology as well as a theoretical framework makes co-writing more than an output-driven technique for increasing productivity. Becoming a researcher requires intense involvement in real research, and it is difficult to teach somebody how to do it. It entails practice. This practice is presented by means of an e-mail correspondence between a doctoral student and her supervisor during the article production. These real-time reflections show that effective apprenticeship in this context is a matter of giving access to the practice of doing research, opening up the field and thereby providing direction. However, it is also a theoretical perspective concerned with adding materiality and real tasks to the relational space between supervisor and the novice researcher." (author's abstract)

Introduction: Nordic countries face societal challenges for which social innovation may represent solutions. The aim of this scoping review is to explore the concept of social innovation within the research contexts of higher education, ealthcare, and welfare services. Method: A scoping review methodology was used, including a literature search and the identification of eligible studies published between 2007 and 2019, in addition to data extraction and synthesis. Forty-three studies were included in this review. Results: Across the research contexts, social innovation is conceptualized as a set of novel, creative, human-centred, and value-driven processes aiming to bring about change. Qualitative research methods dominate social innovation research. In welfare services, social innovation concerns the relationship between policy and praxis, new forms of leadership and management, and the promotion of societal inclusion and cohesion. Social innovation in healthcare comprises the use of technology to digitalize service, enhance patients' well-being, and improve service quality. In higher education, social innovation research focuses on educational reforms involving non-profit stakeholders. Discussion: Social innovation is a multifaceted concept related to change at the organizational or societal level, often with various stakeholders working together to create improvements. The lack of a common definition and framework of social innovation makes this concept difficult to measure or quantify, reflecting the dominance of qualitative research methods in the selected research contexts. Across these research contexts, social innovation can be defined and used for various research purposes, which are often political and value-based, with the latter connected to the common good and people's well-being. Moreover, few social innovation studies have been performed in Nordic countries.

Introduction: Nordic countries face societal challenges for which social innovation may represent solutions. The aim of this scoping review is to explore the concept of social innovation within the research contexts of higher education, ealthcare, and welfare services. Method: A scoping review methodology was used, including a literature search and the identification of eligible studies published between 2007 and 2019, in addition to data extraction and synthesis. Forty-three studies were included in this review. Results: Across the research contexts, social innovation is conceptualized as a set of novel, creative, human-centred, and value-driven processes aiming to bring about change. Qualitative research methods dominate social innovation research. In welfare services, social innovation concerns the relationship between policy and praxis, new forms of leadership and management, and the promotion of societal inclusion and cohesion. Social innovation in healthcare comprises the use of technology to digitalize service, enhance patients' well-being, and improve service quality. In higher education, social innovation research focuses on educational reforms involving non-profit stakeholders. Discussion: Social innovation is a multifaceted concept related to change at the organizational or societal level, often with various stakeholders working together to create improvements. The lack of a common definition and framework of social innovation makes this concept difficult to measure or quantify, reflecting the dominance of qualitative research methods in the selected research contexts. Across these research contexts, social innovation can be defined and used for various research purposes, which are often political and value-based, with the latter connected to the common good and people's well-being. Moreover, few social innovation studies have been performed in Nordic countries.