Meta-Practices: The Role of Ecosystems Actors in Social Innovation

Hughes, Jeffrey; Pitsis, Tyrone; Leighton, Margaret; Bhatia, Kartika

Abstract

In this paper, we theorise the role that multiple actors play in the formation of new practices and the transformation of old practices to produce social innovation. In doing so we apply and extend the practice lens to explain how ‘social innovating’ is a social process where old and ‘sticky’ practices can simultaneously be in tension and harmony with new practices. We seek to understand and theorise the complexities of how practices at a level of specificity interact with and are altered by, but also alter practices across an ecosystem. As such, by integrating complexity theory with practice theory, we offer the idea of ecosystem-level practices that we investigate as a complex array of practices that are crucial to successful social innovation. Counterintuitively, we argue that these practices are unique at the level of specificity within a system. That is, they are not shared or generalisable across the system and yet can have a system-level impact and alter practices in other areas of specificity. We refer to these as ‘meta-practices’.

For example, the innovation of software on a drone in California, can alter the practices of wildlife officers in protecting endangered species in Kenya. Neither the practices of the wildlife officer nor the software engineer have any connection or relevance to each other at the level of specificity. However, one can now detect and monitor poachers and the other has a new market that they can tailor software design towards. We explore the idea and role of meta-practices within the process of social ‘innovating’ as the transmutation of meta-practices to alter practices within a context where those practices do not exist.

We draw upon research conducted with Aspire, a registered non-profit organisation located in India. We explore Aspire’s attempt to address the grand challenge of optimising school education in India’s vast public education system that comprises more than 1.5 million schools, 250 million children, and over 8.5 million teachers. The challenge is more pronounced in rural and indigenous areas, which continue to have scarce educational resources. The current education system leaves the emerging workforce unable to cope with the demands of a twenty-first-century economy. Aspire, with funding from Tata Steel Foundation (TSF), initiated the Education Signature Program (henceforth ‘the Program’) in January 2015 in six blocks of Odisha. Between 2016 and 2021, the Program was scaled up in 12 blocks in Odisha and replicated in 18 blocks in the neighbouring state of Jharkhand and 1 block in West Bengal state. The goal of the Program is to provide equitable and quality secondary education for all children through a revitalised public education system, enabling them to realize their full potential.

Drawing upon both qualitative and quantitative research, we show how practices are not only transformed by purposeful effort between and across levels by individuals and groups of actors in the focal context, but also how loosely coupled actors in different ecosystems across a network are brought together through ‘meta-practices’.

Citation

Hughes, J., Pitsis, T., Leighton, M., & Bhatia, K. (2024, April). Meta-Practices: The Role of Ecosystems Actors in Social Innovation. Paper presented at 9th Annual Entrepreneurship as Practice Conference 2024, Leeds

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 9th Annual Entrepreneurship as Practice Conference 2024
• Conference Location: Leeds
• Start Date: Apr 3, 2024
• End Date: Apr 5, 2024
• Deposit Date: Apr 22, 2024
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2393632