Purpose

Against the background of increasing infrastructure loss in many rural areas, this study aims to contribute conceptually and empirically towards better understanding of rural innovation processes related to provision of public goods.

Design/methodology/approach

The nationally focused understanding of innovation processes leads the debate on rural development into a dilemma that this study seeks to sidestep via the concept of social innovation. Community cooperatives – a type of social enterprise that has increasingly emerged in rural areas of Germany in the past decade – offer the opportunity to examine social innovation processes. This cross-case study reveals the broad range of activities in which such cooperatives are active and analyses their social innovation processes.

Findings

The study shows that the social innovation governance framework enables examination of social innovation processes. Although macro-level policy has appeared to be an important instrument for financing social innovation, public actors at the micro-level seem barely able to initiate social innovation processes unless they are also private actors and, therefore, can pursue additional incentives. The social innovations studied here seem to differ in terms of their actor constellations and resource-allocation patterns, depending on whether they are concerned with the establishment or maintenance of local infrastructure. What they have in common, however, is the initiation of formalised collective-action processes that serve to legitimise social innovation.

Originality/value

By applying an analytical framework that is new to the literature on social innovation, the study provides insight into the activities and decision-making processes of actors involved in social innovation in rural areas. In this context, community cooperatives have rarely been studied as an interface between public, private and civil society actors or as a platform for mobilising human, social and financial capital.

中文翻译：

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了解农村地区的社会创新过程：来自德国社会企业的经验证据

目的

在许多农村地区基础设施损失不断增加的背景下，本研究旨在从概念上和实证上为更好地理解与提供公共产品相关的农村创新过程做出贡献。

设计/方法/方法

对创新过程的国家重点理解导致关于农村发展的辩论陷入两难境地，本研究试图通过社会创新的概念来回避。社区合作社——一种在过去十年中越来越多地出现在德国农村地区的社会企业——提供了检验社会创新过程的机会。这项跨案例研究揭示了此类合作社活跃的广泛活动，并分析了它们的社会创新过程。

发现

研究表明，社会创新治理框架能够检查社会创新过程。尽管宏观层面的政策似乎是为社会创新融资的重要工具，但微观层面的公共行为者似乎几乎无法启动社会创新过程，除非他们也是私人行为者，因此可以寻求额外的激励措施。这里研究的社会创新似乎在它们的参与者群和资源分配模式方面有所不同，这取决于它们是否关注当地基础设施的建立或维护。然而，它们的共同点是启动正式的集体行动过程，使社会创新合法化。

原创性/价值

通过应用对社会创新文献来说是新的分析框架，该研究提供了对农村地区社会创新参与者的活动和决策过程的洞察。在此背景下，社区合作社很少被研究为公共、私营和民间社会行为者之间的接口或作为动员人力、社会和金融资本的平台。