Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to critically understand a programme theory of the “transfer” of work in one social organisation and sector (an innovative and successful social enterprise community café, The Usual Place that seeks to enhance the employability of young people with additional support needs in “hospitality”) to another (Dumfries Theatre Royal, a regional theatre and registered charity, specifically the “Dumfries Arts Award Project” and more generally, “the arts”).

Design/methodology/approach

By means of gaining insight into the complexity of the transfer of innovative practices between two socially oriented organisations and theoretical insights into associated conducive contexts and optimal processes, the work used realist evaluation resources within a longitudinal ethnographic approach. Within this, a series of specific methods were deployed, including semi structured key stakeholder interviews, non-participant observation and “walking” and “paired” interviews with service users in each organisation.

Findings

The principle finding is that with attention being paid to the context and intervention processes associated with transfer processes and having sufficient capacity and strong partnership working, it is possible to take an innovative idea from one context, transfer it to another setting and have relatively immediate “success” in terms of achieving a degree of sustainability. The authors propose a provisional programme theory that illuminates this transfer. They were also able to show that, whilst working with the potentially conservative concept of “employability”; both organisations were able to maintain a progressive ethos associated with social innovation.

Originality/value

The work offers theoretical and methodological originality. The significance of “scaling up” social innovation is recognised as under-researched and under-theorised and the use of a realistic evaluation approach and the associated development of provisional programme theory address this.

中文翻译：

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邓弗里斯艺术奖项目：建立跨两个社会组织的创新转移项目理论

目的

本文的目的是批判性地理解一个社会组织和部门（一个创新和成功的社会企业社区咖啡馆，The Usual Place，旨在通过额外支持提高年轻人的就业能力）中工作“转移”的计划理论需要“热情好客”）到另一个（邓弗里斯皇家剧院，一个地区剧院和注册慈善机构，特别是“邓弗里斯艺术奖项目”，更广泛地说，是“艺术”）。

设计/方法/方法

通过深入了解两个面向社会的组织之间创新实践转移的复杂性，以及对相关有利环境和优化过程的理论洞察，这项工作在纵向民族志方法中使用了现实主义的评估资源。其中，采用了一系列具体方法，包括半结构化的关键利益相关者访谈、非参与式观察以及对每个组织的服务用户进行“步行”和“配对”访谈。

发现

主要发现是，通过关注与转移过程相关的背景和干预过程，并具有足够的能力和强大的合作伙伴关系，就有可能从一种背景中获取创新想法，将其转移到另一种环境中，并具有相对直接的“成功”在实现一定程度的可持续性方面。作者提出了一个临时计划理论来阐明这种转移。他们还能够证明这一点，同时使用“就业能力”这一潜在的保守概念；两个组织都能够保持与社会创新相关的进步精神。

原创性/价值

这项工作提供了理论和方法上的独创性。“扩大”社会创新的重要性被认为是研究不足和理论不足，现实评估方法的使用和临时计划理论的相关发展解决了这个问题。