Social Innovation in the Local Public Sector: A Cross-Regional Approach for Romania

Abstract

Social innovation could be understood as “new ideas (products, service and models) that, simultaneously meet needs and create new social relationships or collaboration” (Murray et al., 2010). For the local public sector, the social innovation gains endemic characteristics, connected to better use of local resources and human resources, as well as those concerning interregional or even cross-regional cooperation. For the time being, Romania undergoes a complex process of shifting to regional organization, which essentially involves important changes with genuine characteristics of social innovation. The most obvious aspects of social innovation are expressed by administrative innovation or systemic innovation. Of course, the innovation in the public services or processes for public service delivery becomes visible through citizen orientation, involvement of new material and financial resources. In this context, the current paper aims to emphasise the main characteristics of social innovation, determined by regionalization and administrative re-organizations. The cross-regional approach comprises interregional comparative studies and it highlights the instruments for evaluation of social innovation and their application in view to substantiate the comparative studies concerning the impact of social innovation. The research methodology comprises bibliographic syntheses, comparative studies as well as socio-innovative empirical researches.