Research, part of a Special Feature on Resilience Through Multi-scalar Collaboration Surmountable Chasms: Networks and Social Innovation for Resilient Systems

By M. Moore, Frances Westley. 2011

357 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Complex challenges demand complex solutions. By their very nature, these problems are difficult to define and are often the result of rigid social structures that effectively act as "traps". However, resilience theory and the adaptive cycle can serve as a useful framework for understanding how humans may move beyond these traps and towards the social innovation that is required to address many complex problems. This paper explores the critical question of whether networks help facilitate innovations to bridge the seemingly insurmountable chasms of complex problems to create change across scales, thereby increasing resilience. The argument is made that research has not yet adequately articulated the strategic agency that must be present within the network in order for cross scale interactions to occur. By examining institutional entrepreneurship through case studies and examples, this paper proposes that agency within networks requires specific skills from entrepreneurs, including ones that enable pattern generation, relationship building and brokering, knowledge and resource brokering, and network recharging. Ultimately, this begins to build a more complete understanding of how networks may improve human capacity to respond to complex problems and heighten overall resilience.

Subfields: Business and International Management, Management Science and Operations Research, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12c3e933e0651bd959087135adb6fdb59ced171b

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Citations in the corpus

General Resilience to Cope with Extreme Events (2012, background): “institutional entrepreneurs that manage the context, complex as it is), help shape management and governance trajectories, developing shared visions, building trust, connecting social networks across levels, and seizing windows of opportunity for social-ecological transformations towards adaptive go”
Elucidating the changing roles of civil society in urban sustainability transitions (2016, background): “We argue that civil society performs a new role in this regard: altering values and beliefs towards more sustainable ones, contributing to social–ecological and economic literacy and putting knowledge into action for sustainability [25].”
The concept of the Anthropocene as a game-changer: a new context for social innovation and transformations to sustainability (2017, background): “…sought to understand the role of policy in facilitating and generating social innovation (Moore et al. 2012a, Tjornbo and Westley 2012), networks (Moore and Westley 2011) and agency (Dorado 2005, Westley et al. 2013) in enabling the movement of innovations across scales, social finance (Antadze…”
Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (2015, background): “As Moore and Westley (2011) suggest, despite their importance in supporting social innovation, appropriate networks do not seem to”
The distribution of roles and functions for upscaling and outscaling innovations in agricultural innovation systems (2013, background): “Moore and Westley (2011) identify institutional entrepreneurship as a role separate from inventors and brokers and the term refers to a group of actors seeking to change institutional arrangements and leveraging resources to create new institutions or transform existing ones to serve an interest…”
Social innovation: a window on alternative ways of organizing and innovating (2017, background): “…can be characterized as working in and between organizations and networks, not only to create apparently novel solutions, but also to develop a range of support mechanisms for the ‘ecosystems’ and ‘platforms’ that shape social change (Moore & Westley, 2011; Nambisan, 2009; Wallin, 2011).”
Enabling effective problem-oriented research for sustainable development (2012, background): “…et al. 2001, Cash et al. 2003), theory of inter- and transdisciplinarity (Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn 2007, Hirsch Hadorn et al. 2008, Frodeman et al. 2010), resilience theory (Moore and Westley 2011), organization science (March 1991), and transition management (Rotmans et al. 2001, Miller et al 2008).”
The Relationship between Systems Thinking and the New Ecological Paradigm (2016, background): “It arose concurrently with complexity theory, quantum physics, and general systems theory during the mid-20th century and has been argued to be essential for perceiving and understanding the behavior of complex adaptive systems (CASs) (Fazey, 2010; Moore and Westley, 2011; Henning and Chen, 2012).”