Social innovation: Moving the field forward. A conceptual framework

• Social innovation as a driver of social change
• Social innovation constructed through legitimated social actions
• The role of institutions enabling and constraining social action
• A model to guide future research based on institutional and structuration theories

Research on social innovation has gained momentum over the last decade, spurred notably by the growing interest in social issues related to management, entrepreneurship, and public management. Nevertheless, the boundaries of social innovation processes have not yet been completely defined, leaving considerable space for contributions to both theory and practice. To date, research on social innovation has been polarized between agentic and structuralist approaches. Building on institutional and structuration theories, this article proposes bringing these two approaches together and presents a new conceptual framework to investigate social innovation as a driver of social change.