Abstract
Westley defined social innovation as ‘an initiative, product or process or program that profoundly changes the basic routines, resource and authority flows or beliefs of any social system and has durability and broad impact’ (Westley and Antadze, 2010, p. 2). Intentionally creating social innovations requires the kind of agents who can understand and actively change the rules and the structure of the system. These agents are, in the language of this chapter, ‘projective agents’ (Emirbaayer and Mische, 1998). They emphasize the orientation to the future, responsive choice, and inventive manipulation of the physical and social worlds. This chapter deals primarily with features of the projective agent that are useful in formally modelling social innovation as a process. Modelling is just one of several approaches to understanding, but it complements empirical and applied investigation (Macy and Willer, 2002).
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© 2012 Kirsten Robinson, David Robinson, and Frances Westley
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Robinson, K., Robinson, D., Westley, F. (2012). Agency in Social Innovation: Putting the Model in the Model of the Agent. In: Nicholls, A., Murdock, A. (eds) Social Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230367098_7
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