Guest editorial: Reconfiguring relations: social innovation as governed practice for inclusive development

In an era marked by intersecting crises, from widening social inequalities to environmental crisis and democratic fragility, the search for transformative responses is urgent. Conventional, siloed, top-down approaches struggle to match the complexity of these challenges. Against this backdrop, the intertwined domains of social innovation and participatory governance offer ethically grounded avenues for inclusive development, not as purely technical fixes but as social and political processes shaped by who participates and whose knowledge counts (Moulaert et al., 2013; Murray et al., 2010). Yet, despite growing policy interest, the practical and ethical mechanics of how these paradigms intersect to produce equitable outcomes remain underexplored.

This special issue of the Social Enterprise Journal foregrounds that premise. By convening scholars and practitioners across management, agronomy, social work, climate governance, technology and community development, it examines how participatory governance can structure the co-production of knowledge by bringing together policymakers, researchers, professionals and community members into collective and democratic development processes, that are both ethically thorough and practically actionable, producing solutions that are context-sensitive and equitable. This focus on the interdisciplinary co-production speaks directly to the core mission of the Social Enterprise Journal, which aims to bridge theory and practice in ways that matter for organisational strategy, policy design and, ultimately, community well-being.

Our core theme, “Social Innovation and Participatory Governance: Ethical Pathways for Inclusive Development”, insists that innovation’s value depends on its governance: procedures of inclusion that secure the meaningful participation of all stakeholder groups, especially the least advantaged, the recognition of diverse forms of expertise and attention to power relations in how problems are framed and solutions implemented (Galego et al., 2022). Democratising social innovation also requires grappling with knowledge hierarchies and legacies of exclusion, including calls to decolonise knowledge production and evaluation (Cummings et al., 2021).

Thus, social innovation is not measured only by its immediate, novel or material outputs but also by its ability to reconfigure social contexts and relationships by expanding people’s empowerment and opportunities (Ziegler, 2018). Within this framing, ethical appraisal attends to plural actors and values, diverse conversion factors and potential value conflicts, thereby orienting this special issue toward both scholarly advancement and real-world impact (Bustamante Donas, 2013; J. Ims and Zsolnai, 2014).

The response to our call underscores the vibrancy of this agenda. We received a wide array of submissions from across the globe, spanning qualitative case studies, comparative designs and mixed methods approaches. Following a double-blind review, we are pleased to present seven articles that collectively map critical tensions and promising pathways at the intersection of innovation and governance. Each contribution advances the theme by clarifying core questions, mobilising valid methods and offering empirically grounded insights with implications for management practice, policy instruments and community-level change. Together, they illuminate how ethical imperatives actively shape governance arrangements and innovation practices, by reconfiguring relationships, redistributing epistemic authority and opening routes toward more democratic and sustainable outcomes.

Social innovation is polysemic and contested across communities of practice and research, but also across time and fields. While past usages ranged from social reform to contested, politicised projects, contemporary syntheses typically converge on three interlinked pillars: meeting neglected human needs, transforming social relations and enabling socio-political empowerment through collective action (Galego et al., 2022). Scholarship also notes that social innovation’s ambiguity stems both from its evolving analytical status and its overuse as a policy buzzword, which risks masking its emancipatory intent (Moulaert et al., 2013).

A first, a foundational tension opposes output-centric and process-centric views. Policy and practice handbooks, situated at the intersection of the social economy, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise, stress methods to design, develop and grow social innovation initiatives, emphasising pipelines from idea to implementation, scaling and ultimately systemic change (Murray et al., 2010). By contrast, institutionalist traditions conceive social innovation as collective action, which densifies social relations and can enable socio-political transformation, with governance understood as new modes of governing that include participatory and co-productive decision-making (Galego et al., 2022; Moulaert et al., 2013). In this processual lens, who participates and how authority is shared are constitutive of social innovation’s value, not merely instruments for delivery (Cloutier, 2003).

A second tension contrasts managerial instrumentalization with democratic transformation. Scoping evidence highlights both the inclusive potential of social innovation and the risk of neoliberal appropriations that recast social innovation as a substitute for welfare obligations or as “Janus-faced” participation that leaves power relations intact (Galego et al., 2022). In response, the empowered-participatory governance tradition proposes designs that devolve authority, connect local units to higher tiers and support deliberative problem-solving, aiming to be both participatory and effective (Fung and Wright, 2001). At its more transformative edge, social innovations initiatives are most credible when territorially embedded, mobilising networks to alter decision-making arrangements and address basic needs and alienated rights (Klein et al., 2016).

A third tension concerns levels and loci of change. Syntheses in the Centre for Research on Social Innovations in Montréal (CRISES) distinguish social innovation oriented to the individual, the territory and the enterprise and argue that social innovation can be identified by its novelty, its collaborative process requiring user participation and its contribution to the well-being of individuals and communities (Cloutier, 2003). This multi-level view emphasises place-based collective action and sits at the social innovation participatory governance interface: democratic co-production can enhance relevance and legitimacy, yet it must be institutionally designed to avoid inefficiency or tokenism (Fung and Wright, 2001).

Beyond these three core tensions, recent political developments in several countries introduce an additional layer of contestation for social innovation. We note the growth of populist parties (of both left and right) and an emerging literature which explores the implications for social innovation and for aspects of governance and ethics. This has been already the subject of work in respect of public sector innovation and practice (Borins, 2018; Murdock and Barber, 2020). The implications of populism for innovation generally have also been explored (Tang et al., 2024). Recently, a research handbook on Populism featured an entry which examined the impact of populism in terms of social movements. The focus of populism (whether of left or right) upon reflecting “the will of the people” and opposing “elites” could raise questions of how this may influence social innovation and how the governance and ethical context is constructed (della Porta and Portos, 2024). Possibly, populism may even encourage more social innovation but whether it is viewed as positive would depend on the political perspective of the observer.

Across these strands, social innovation is distinctive in both means and ends, as it pursues new solutions and new social relations (Murray et al., 2010) under conditions that are simultaneously institutional, ethical and political. Its evaluation is therefore necessarily plural, balancing outcomes with participatory quality, governance arrangements and ethical as well as democratic transformative reach.

We treat participatory governance as the institutional design of “new ways of governing” (Galego et al., 2021, p. 265) that brings policymakers, professionals, researchers and community members into co-construction beyond hierarchical command-and-control (Massey and Johnston-Miller, 2016). In democratic innovation research, these designs deepen citizens’ opportunities for participation, deliberation and influence across policy and social innovation cycles (Descloux et al., 2025; Elstub and Escobar, 2019).

A central debate opposes consultative arrangements, where stakeholders are heard but exert little influence, to co-productive arrangements, where authority is shared across commissioning, design, delivery and evaluation (Arnstein, 1969). A systematic review of evidence shows that “co-creation/co-production” has been applied to different actors (individuals, groups, collectives) and stages of the social innovation process, with deeper co-production reconfiguring roles rather than adding one-off consultations (Voorberg et al., 2014). The same review notes a persistent evaluation gap: studies often report activities and antecedents, while outcomes and effects on decision power remain underexamined. Similar dynamics have also been documented in the use of design-based methods such as the Design Sprint, which operationalise co-production by temporarily suspending hierarchical roles and structuring collective problem-solving across professional and user groups (Felix, 2020).

Linking participatory governance to social innovation helps ensure that solutions are context-sensitive, inclusive and legitimate. Under governance syntheses, social innovation is not only about producing solutions but about configuring decision arenas and social relations through which those solutions are co-produced (Elstub and Escobar, 2019; Galego et al., 2022). From a public-governance angle, evolving from “governance” to “governance for social innovation” requires clarifying how state, market and civil society share roles; otherwise, participation risks remaining peripheral to the core of policy and organisational change (Massey and Johnston-Miller, 2016). At the same time, the literature warns against instrumental participation. These cautions underline that design choices, rather than participation per se, determine whether governance anchors democratisation or merely legitimises pre-set agendas.

To avoid tokenism while preserving effectiveness, classic empowered participatory governance emphasises combining devolution with coordination and deliberation with accountability (Fung and Wright, 2001). Recent work argues for rebalancing a narrow focus on deliberative legitimacy with participatory capacity for change, so that processes mobilise empowerment and implementation, not just input (Escobar and Bua, 2025). Taken together, these insights specify that, as a democratic anchor, participatory governance specifies who participates, when in the policy and social innovation cycle and with what power. When these design parameters are explicit, social innovation gains relevance, legitimacy and traction; when they are not, participation slides toward symbolism.

In this Special Issue, ethics is treated as constitutive of social innovation, shaping both what counts as a meaningful innovation and how it should be practised. Bustamante Donas’ philosophical work (2013) on social innovation highlights ethical “vectors” that surface in collaborative settings, such as communities of knowledge, democracy and citizen participation, dialogue between popular and scientific knowledges and holistic pedagogy, through which empowerment dynamics emerge beyond standard metrics. These vectors suggest that evaluation cannot be reduced to outputs alone; it must attend to how knowledge is co-produced and to the social learning processes that innovations set in motion.

Business ethics scholarship reinforces this orientation by showing that exemplary social innovation cases prioritise social and humanitarian goals (e.g. minimising suffering, empowering people, strengthening local communities) and endure when they are sensitive to local cultures and animated by an ethos of the common good (J. Ims and Zsolnai, 2014). Their comparative analysis of well-known initiatives indicates that success hinges less on product novelty than on goals, means and the user capabilities required, thereby foregrounding context, values and empowerment as core evaluative criteria. User-centred design approaches have further demonstrated how experiential knowledge can be structurally embedded into innovation processes, reinforcing both ethical participation and epistemic justice beyond consultative formats (Felix et al., 2022).

The capability approach (CA) deepens this normative compass. Ziegler (2018) positions the CA as a framework that places justice and democracy at the core of social innovation by shifting attention from resources and aggregate indicators to people’s real freedoms (capabilities) to achieve valued functioning and exercise agency. This implies recognising human diversity, plural values and the conversion factors that condition what different people can do with the same means; it also entails reconfiguring the social contexts, such as institutions, networks and cognitive frames, that enable or constrain capabilities. The author further notes a policy gap: while social innovation is officially endorsed as participatory, practical policies that realise co-determination remain limited and the least advantaged often lack the capability to associate, which calls for designs that strengthen collective voice.

From a practice-oriented vantage point, ethics emerges in the articulation between high-impact projects and democratic ideals. Scholars across applied fields conceptualise innovation as the development of responses to evolving social challenges while reaffirming foundational values (participation, well-being) and rehabilitating community expertise as a criterion of quality (J. Ims and Zsolnai, 2014; Rullac, 2020). This perspective cautions against technocratic drift and seeks an operational characterisation of processes that is both effective and equitable. Finally, democratic innovation research argues that ethical legitimacy (inclusion, epistemic justice, considered judgment) must be matched by capacity for change, resources and implementation, if participation is to be more than symbolic. Escobar and Bua (2025) call for a participatory corrective to deliberative hegemony to mobilise, such capacity, an agenda that aligns with social innovation’s ethical commitments and with participatory governance designs discussed above.

Ethics provides a demanding standard: judge social innovation by its contribution to expanding substantive freedoms and agency, its sensitivity to plural/local knowledges and cultures, its empowerment effects in communities and its ability to align participatory legitimacy with implementation capacity. The contributions in this special issue are held against this demanding standard, judged by their contribution to expanding substantive freedoms.

The selected articles are organised into three thematic areas that reflect the core tensions and contributions at the heart of this Special Issue’s inquiry. These areas are as follows: first, the architecture of co-production, which examines how participation is deliberately structured through design choices that convert consultation into co-decision; second, the negotiation of responsibility, which explores the ethical governance of data-driven innovation and the mechanisms for distributing obligation; and third, the institutional levers for inclusion, which highlights the underpinnings of durable change, from community-level stewardship to the re-design of national research systems. Together, they map the critical dimensions of design, distribution and institutional foundations where the theoretical ambitions of social innovation meet the complexities of practice.

Taken together, the following contributions show how concrete design choices, such as early inclusion, internal advocates within administrations and social-first routines, convert participation from consultation into co-decision and co-production. They also reveal recurrent constraints (resources, timing, administrative routines) that risk diluting participatory intent unless governance and stewardship are explicitly protected.

Tafonseka, Bellazzecca and Tropeano’s contribution, Tafonseka et al. (2026), interrogates whether outcome-based contracting (OBC) can genuinely catalyse social innovation and which organisational and institutional conditions shape that potential. Anchored in an Italian public–private pilot, the study examines a multi-actor collaboration oriented toward socially salient outcomes. A qualitative single-case design yields a granular analysis of contracting dynamics. Findings show that while OBC aligns incentives around results, it is frequently reabsorbed by legacy routines, compliance-heavy measurement and fragmented coordination, thereby constraining relational learning and institutional reconfiguration. The counter-intuitive insight is that contract novelty does not translate into innovative practice without governance that values capabilities, reflexivity and process quality. The paper advances the Special Issue’s agenda by specifying how participatory governance and ethical evaluation extend beyond narrow key performance indicator (KPI) logics to sustain co-production. Managerially, it recommends cross-sector learning infrastructures and shared measurement systems that register relational outcomes. For policymakers, it underscores investment in administrative capabilities and inclusive stewardship to avoid procedural capture. Future research should pursue comparative designs across policy domains to identify the boundary conditions under which OBC supports system-level change.

Kaiser, Wulf and Heidingsfelder’s study, Kaiser et al. (2026), specifies how ethical requirements for participation can be translated into workable governance under real-world constraints. Situated in a politically initiated social innovation targeting women’s economic independence, it convenes public administration, researchers and diverse civil-society stakeholders. Using a qualitative case with reflexive team analysis and a retrospective participant survey, it assesses access and representation, discursive openness and power and impact. Early, actively supported participation, methodological plurality (including speculative/utopian elements) and internal “process/outcome advocates” within administrations enable tangible adoption and empowerment despite frictions. Conceptually, the paper identifies design levers that connect participatory governance to capability expansion and knowledge co-production. For practice, it argues for resourcing facilitation, safeguarding time for iterative methods and formalising bridge roles across administrative and community logics. For policy, it recommends mandates and timelines that protect inclusive design from tokenism. Future research should map which design–context combinations yield durable redistribution of decision power.

Parpan–Blaser’s contribution, Parpan-Blaser (2026) explores how transdisciplinary co-creation can address communication barriers in social-assistance counselling while upholding clients’ rights to participation and understanding. In a highly regulated public service, social-service managers and frontline workers collaborated with clients, an umbrella organisation and design researchers to co-produce visual counselling materials across ten topics. A case study approach, combining observation, interviews and document analysis, traces iterative co-design cycles and their organisational embedding. Findings indicate that co-created visual tools reduce administrative frictions, enhance comprehension and support client agency; however, they depend on adequate funding, flexible governance and strategies to navigate gatekeeping and workload pressures. Conceptually, the article advances the Special Issue’s concern with knowledge co-production and capabilities by showing how communication artefacts can reconfigure participation conditions. Managerially, it advocates budgeting time and resources for iterative design and protected spaces for frontline involvement. At the policy level, it calls for procurement and financing pathways that accommodate open-ended, participatory innovation. Further research should evaluate client-level outcomes and explore transferability to adjacent human–services fields facing similar informational asymmetries.

The following contributions demonstrate that ethical gains hinge on how engagement is organised and responsibility distributed, not merely on formal inclusion or data availability. Both pieces clarify the mechanisms through which neglected interests become legible and how responsibilisation can drift towards individuals unless governance infrastructures are made explicit.

Ehsan, Hussain, Akbar and Arshad’s paper, Ehsan et al. (2026), asks how stakeholder inclusion and ethical framing shape engagement processes and outcomes, with particular attention to marginalised and future constituencies often rendered “invisible”. Set within corporate settings and drawing on a cross-sectional survey of senior managers, the study uses mediation modelling to track pathways from inclusion to engagement quality and ethical effects. Results indicate that inclusion is positively associated with ethical outcomes but crucially through the organisation of engagement processes that make neglected interests legible and actionable. By operationalising the category of “invisible stakeholders”, the article deepens the Special Issue’s focus on epistemic justice and participatory governance in contexts dominated by managerial metrics. Practically, it calls for routines that institutionalise representation for marginalised, non-human and intergenerational stakeholders within decision cycles. At the policy level, it points to disclosure and assurance frameworks that require explicit consideration of long-horizon and non-market interests. The research agenda should broaden with mixed-methods and comparative studies across sectors and political economies to examine how inclusion mechanisms travel and with what distributional consequences for communities whose interests are typically externalised.

Darmonski’s article, Darmonski (2026), interrogates the socio-technical dynamics of a digital social innovation designed to improve the transparency and quality of municipal climate data, focusing on how “responsibility” is translated across heterogeneous actors. Drawing on an Actor–Network Theory (ANT) lens and the concept of translation, the qualitative case combines document analysis, semi-structured interviews and participant observation within a Swiss platform initiative. The analysis shows that despite systemic ambitions, responsibility becomes moralised and individualised, revealing a conceptual and practical gap in governance design for digital civic infrastructures. Reframing responsibility as negotiated and networked, the paper argues for infrastructural supports that distribute obligations and enable collective action rather than relying on appeals to virtue. The contribution to the special issue lies in specifying how ethical evaluation and participatory governance must be operationalised to prevent the individualisation of responsibility in data-driven innovations. For practice, the study recommends explicit protocols for responsibility sharing and data stewardship. For policy, it highlights the need to finance intermediaries and common standards that anchor collective responsibility. Future research should pursue comparative analyses across platforms to identify which governance arrangements best align ethical legitimacy with implementation capacity.

Placing social innovation within institutional and territorial infrastructures, the following contributions show how rules, maintenance and accountability shape who benefits and whose knowledge counts. They illustrate that durable access and inclusion depend on community stewardship and on organisational designs that allocate authority and resources, not merely on formal commitments to openness.

Gouthon, Adjovi, Assogba, Idrissou and Moumouni-Moussa’s study, Gouthon et al. (2026), analyses how institutional arrangements enabling community-level digital accessibility improve smallholders’ access to agricultural knowledge. Situated in rural Benin around shared “digikiosk” infrastructures, it explores a consortium model linking a research institute, an NGO, a private firm and farmer communities. A qualitative case design based on interviews and documentary analysis foregrounds governance mechanisms rather than technological artefacts per se. Two arrangements emerge as pivotal: community-selected managers who sustain proximity, trust and tailored support and collective mobilisation for maintenance that secures functionality over time. These practices instantiate polycentric, inclusive governance that turns digital access into situated learning, while also revealing tensions around power, coordination burdens and long-term financing. The article contributes to the special issue by demonstrating how user/knowledge co-production and ethical, place-based governance convert digital tools into social innovation. Managerially, it counsels social-first design that budgets for local stewardship and ongoing care. Policymakers are encouraged to embed flexibility and community oversight into digital-agriculture programmes. Future studies should test scalability and equity effects across sites, assessing whether similar arrangements can travel without eroding community ownership.

Dotzel, Heidingsfelder and Schraudner’s paper, Dotzel et al. (2026), examines how federal innovation strategies and science–communication initiatives in Germany have framed participation and with what implications for inclusive social innovation and agenda-setting. Through documentary analysis complemented by expert insights, the article traces evolving rationales, instruments and evaluative criteria across national and European frameworks. It finds that while policy rhetoric foregrounds openness and engagement, implementation often privileges visibility, competitiveness and dissemination metrics over empowerment and co-decision, leaving epistemic injustices intact and under-representing marginalised publics. The piece contributes to the special issue by bridging participatory governance and science-communication debates, arguing that inclusive innovation ecosystems require institutional designs that redistribute agenda-setting power rather than merely amplifying outreach. For practice, it proposes a shift from communication outputs to co-creation metrics and shared agenda setting with affected communities. For policy, it recommends embedding resources and requirements for inclusive processes, alongside accountability for participation quality and impact. Future research should undertake comparative policy tracing to examine how different national arrangements align participation designs with substantive shifts in research and innovation priorities.

Read across the seven contributions, three cross-cutting themes stand out. First, design trumps label: contractual forms, digital platforms or participation slogans do not, in themselves, produce social innovation; rather, who participates, with what authority and through which routines determines whether initiatives shift relations and capabilities. This is clearest in the Italian OBC case, the German women’s economic independence process and the Swiss co-designed counselling materials, where early inclusion, internal advocates and iterative methods convert consultation into co-decision. Second, ethical appraisal is inseparable from governance. The studies on invisible stakeholders and on climate data platforms show that inclusion yields ethical gains only when engagement is organised and responsibility distributed; absent explicit infrastructures (standards, roles, intermediaries), responsibilisation drifts to individuals and “participation” becomes symbolic. Third, infrastructures and territorial embedding matter. From Benin’s digikiosks to German public research organisations, durable access and inclusion hinge on community stewardship, maintenance rules and institutional incentives – an infrastructural turn that moves beyond one-off projects.

Collectively, the papers advance a theoretical consolidation around social innovation as both outputs and outcomes. They re-balance an outcomes orientation with a processual-centred account: innovation is evidenced not only by novel solutions but by reconfigured relationships and decision arenas, redistributed epistemic authority and expanded agency for least-advantaged groups. Several contributions operationalise this stance. The OBC analysis shows how measurement regimes can either narrow or widen what “counts”, while the invisible stakeholder study specifies mechanisms, such as selection, voice and responsiveness, through which neglected interests become legible. The ANT-informed climate case reframes responsibility as a networked property requiring socio-technical scaffolding, aligning with capability and epistemic justice perspectives. The Benin and Swiss social-welfare cases demonstrate co-production as a method and outcome: material artefacts (kiosks, visual tools) become ethical infrastructures when paired with local managers, maintenance norms and protected time. Finally, the work on public research organisations highlights that system-level narratives of openness must be coupled to organisational designs that shift agenda-setting power, otherwise inclusion remains performative.

A second, field-level contribution is to specify design levers and boundary conditions. The recurring levers are strikingly convergent across contexts: early and proactive inclusion; named boundary-spanning roles (internal advocates, intermediaries, community managers); iterative, plural methods (co-design, speculative/utopian techniques) that surface tacit knowledge; and shared measurement that registers relational/process outcomes alongside outputs. The boundary conditions are equally consistent: rigid timelines, compliance-heavy metrics, fragmented coordination and under-resourced front lines repeatedly blunt participatory intent. The idea is not to reject measurement but to advocate for adapted metrics, aligned with collective learning and the expansion of capabilities.

These consolidated findings offer more than a theoretical advance, as they provide a practical design playbook for researchers, practitioners and decision-makers across public, private and community sectors. At the organisational level:

• build cross-sector learning platforms that normalise reflexivity and failure-tolerant iteration;

• budget for stewardship work, such as facilitation, maintenance and translation, that is often invisible yet decisive; and

• institutionalise shared measurement frameworks that include relational indicators (quality of participation, perceived fairness, role reconfiguration).

For programme leads:

• formalise responsibility-sharing protocols and data-stewardship roles in digital initiatives;

• protect time for co-design cycles and frontline participation; and

• appoint and train boundary spanners who bridge administrative and community logics.

For ecosystem builders:

• support community-selected managers and maintenance funds in place-based digital projects; and

• invest in intermediaries that hold together polycentric collaborations.

Policy and governance implications follow directly. First, move from exhortation to instrumentation: embed participation quality requirements in funding calls, procurement and audit criteria; pair them with resources for facilitation and evaluation. Second, reform measurement and assurance: extend disclosure frameworks to require treatment of intergenerational, non-human and marginalised stakeholders; accept mixed-method evidence when assessing public value. Third, mandate capability-enhancing timelines: review programme cycles (e.g. 24–36 months) that systematically undercut community embedding and learning-by-doing. Fourth, standardise yet contextualise: develop lightweight standards (for data stewardship, role definitions, power-sharing) that are adaptable to sectoral and territorial specificities. Fifth, govern for infrastructure: treat participation, maintenance and translation as public goods, eligible for recurrent funding, rather than as overhead to be minimised.

For research, the set charts a cumulative agenda. Comparative designs should test which combinations of design levers and institutional conditions produce durable shifts in authority and outcomes across sectors and political economies. Methodologically, pairing process-tracing with mixed-methods evaluation can link participation quality to distributional and capability gains. Conceptually, further integration between CA, epistemic-justice frameworks and governance studies can refine what “counts” as success in social innovation. Finally, scaling should be reconceived as institutionalisation – the crafting of rules, roles and repertoires that travel without erasing local ownership.

In sum, these papers collectively reposition social innovation as governed practice: a suite of design choices and infrastructures that align ethics with implementation. The theoretical pay-off is a clearer account of how participation produces value; the practical pay-off is a replicable, context-sensitive repertoire; the policy pay-off is a roadmap to embed inclusion, learning and shared responsibility at the core of innovation systems.

If this special issue demonstrates one thing, it is that the “social” in social innovation is not a decorative adjective, but a demanding practice of participatory governance, ethics and shared authority, that delivers only when governance is intentionally designed to support it. The decisive shift is from projects that “involve” stakeholders to institutions that share authority, responsibilities and learning routines. When stewardship work (facilitation, maintenance, translation) is made visible and resourced, participation moves beyond symbolism; when measurement attends to relations and capabilities, value creation becomes legible; when infrastructures and timelines fit community dynamics, inclusion endures beyond cycles.

Practically and politically, three commitments follow. First, instrumentation over exhortation: embed participation quality requirements, and the budgets to meet them, into funding, procurement and audit. Second, measurement with meaning: complement output indicators with relational/process metrics tied to fairness, role reconfiguration and capability gains. Third, govern for infrastructure: treat stewardship, data standards and boundary-spanning roles as public goods worthy of recurrent support.

Future research should advance: comparative design tests of inclusion timing, boundary-spanner roles and iterative methods across sectors; process and relation-sensitive evaluation, linking participation quality to distributional outcomes; longitudinal institutionalisation studies tracking how rules and repertoires travel without eroding local ownership; and governance of digital civic infrastructures, specifying responsibility-sharing, data stewardship and anti-responsibilisation safeguards. For social innovation to fulfil its promises of inclusion and democracy, it is imperative to align ethical intent with a genuine capacity for participatory implementation. Consolidating these lines of inquiry marks a decisive step: it is on this terrain of people, practices, infrastructures and institutions that social innovation can truly take root or ultimately fail.

The authors warmly thank the authors for their valuable contributions, the anonymous reviewers for their constructive engagement and the Social Enterprise Journal editorial team for guidance throughout the process. Their combined efforts made this special issue possible.

The guest editors for this study are Aline Felix and Alexander Murdock.