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Mobile health (mHealth) innovations are considered by governments as game changers toward more sustainable health systems. Existing literature focuses on the clinical aspects of mHealth but lacks an integrated frame on its sustainability. The foundational idea for this paper is to include disciplinary complementarities into a multi-dimensional vision to evaluate the sustainability of mHealth innovations. Through a targeted literature review on the relevant non-clinical aspects of mHealth, this article reflects on how mHealth’s sustainability can be assessed and identifies some of the challenges ahead of researchers working on mobile health innovations in contributing to shaping a more sustainable health system.

Le théâtre théorique (TT) est une technique d’enseignement en équipe fondée en 2012 à l’Université d’East Anglia . Des enseignant∙e∙s, accompagné∙e∙s ponctuellement d’étudiant∙e∙s, y incarnent des théories dans le champ des sciences sociales par le biais de personnages aux langage, comportement et apparence construits à partir de ces théories dans le cadre de performances théâtrales réalisées lors de séances de cours. L’objectif global du TT est d’amener les étudiant∙e∙s à s’intéresser aux fondements sous-jacents des théories en sciences sociales et à leurs différences épistémologiques, mais également à réfléchir de façon critique à leurs forces et faiblesses explicatives pour interpréter et résoudre des problèmes contemporains. Le TT tel que pratiqué en 2019-2020 dans le cadre de l’année préparatoire au Master en politique économique et sociale de la Faculté Ouverte de Politique Economique et Sociale (FOPES) de l’UCLouvain s’inspire du dispositif mis en place à l’Université d’East Anglia pour l’adapter au contexte particulier d’une formation universitaire pour adultes en reprise d’études . A partir du récit de cette expérience, l’article met en évidence le travail singulier de transposition d’une pensée théorique vers le théâtre ainsi que ses enjeux. Après avoir présenté le TT (section 2), nous expliquerons les raisons qui nous ont amené à l’adopter dans le cadre de la FOPES (section 3) avant de détailler cette expérience (section 4). Nous examinons ensuite plus spécifiquement le travail de transposition sur lequel repose le TT (section 5). Notre hypothèse est que ce travail se rapproche d’une écriture scientifique alternative déjà en voie d’exploration dans d’autres expériences innovantes à la frontière entre recherche et enseignement. Il constitue une compétence en soi - tant pour les étudiant∙e∙s que les enseignant∙e∙s, et nécessite un encadrement spécifique. Enfin, nous faisons le bilan de l’expérience (section 6).

Over the past two decades, organizational sustainability has been studied from several different perspectives, such as marketing, governance, strategy, and human resource management (HRM). However, sustainability framed in HRM has not yet received enough attention in the literature, especially as it concerns the study of different organizational forms. Building on Enhert and Harry’s (2012) sustainable HRM approach, this article studies worker empowerment and how it affects organizational performance in terms of service quality and service innovation. Specifically, it addresses how relational motivations interact with HR-empowering practices (involvement in decisions and task autonomy) as organizational resources in influencing performance, how workload pressure resulting from HR empowerment can improve performance, and the influence of gender on performance, especially with concerns for human capital (tertiary education) and motivations. To this end, a representative sample of workers employed by Italian social enterprises (ES) in the social service sector is used. We propose multilevel SEMs that are based on two sets of equations specifying worker- and organization-level effects on organizational performance. Our main results show that the combination of worker engagement and an appropriate relational context in the organizational environment is most conducive to delivering better and innovative services. In addition, a higher percentage of well-trained and relationally motivated women employees helps achieve this goal

L’article étudie l'avancée des hommes dans le métier de garde à domicile à domicile. Ceux-ci bénéficient d’un contexte favorable à leur accueil, à fois au niveau sociétal et au sein de l’organisation étudiée, et se retrouvent dans les positions les moins précarisées en termes de contrat. Bien investis auprès des bénéficiaires et au sein de la structure, ils contribuent à rendre visible le besoin de force physique et de gestion des émotions dans l’accomplissement des tâches de care et à le placer au cœur de la répartition des bénéficiaires entre gardes femmes et hommes. Ils contribuent ainsi, paradoxalement, à la revalorisation du métier au détriment de rapports de genre égalitaires.

Mobile health (mHealth) innovations are considered by governments as game changers toward more sustainable health systems. Existing literature focuses on the clinical aspects of mHealth but lacks an integrated framework on its sustainability. The foundational idea for this paper is to include disciplinary complementarities into a multi-dimensional vision to evaluate the non-clinical aspects of mHealth innovations. We performed a targeted literature review to find how the sustainability of mHealth innovations was appraised in each discipline. We found that each discipline considers a different outcome of interest and adopts different time horizons and perspectives for the evaluation. This article reflects on how the sustainability of mHealth innovation can be assessed at both the level of the device itself as well as the level of the health system. We identify some of the challenges ahead of researchers working on mobile health innovations in contributing to shaping a more sustainable health system.

Cet article porte sur deux approches théoriques du changement social, toutes deux étroitement liées au concept d’innovation: celle développée au sein du Centre de recherche sur les innovations sociales (CRISES) de l’Université du Québec d'une part, et, d’autre part, celle développée par les chercheur∙e∙s des Sustainability Transitions Studies (SusTS). Il montre, à partir d’un regard situé (la socioéconomie), qu’elles s’insèrent chacune dans une définition différente du changement social et qu’elles ont suivi des étapes distinctes de conceptualisation. L’article s’interroge sur la tendance observée d'un rapprochement entre ces deux approches à partir de leurs préoccupations communes pour les enjeux socio-écologiques contemporains.

This research attempts to study the social representations underlying health and care social innovations implemented in Wallonia, Belgium to shift ageing policies and management towards the ageing in place paradigm. A panel of 34 experts was interviewed to understand their representations using a Delphi-based methodology. The data were processed using thematic content analysis. The core of social representations of health and care social innovations (HCSI) was related to five key dimensions: D1, responding to unmet or emerging health and care needs; D2, defining (new) targets and beneficiaries of HCSI; D3, disrupting care practices; D4, mobilising a network of key actors; and D5, encouraging political recognition of HCSI to favour its viability and sustainability. Local stakeholders’ social representations tended to recognise only the goal-oriented dimensions in innovations and ignore process-oriented aspects. The blind spots for workers’ participation and empowerment may jeopardise their working conditions, causing a cascade effect on the quality of services and the care relationship. This affected how health and care organisations responded to innovation and might also compromise the long-term sustainability of ageing in place practices in Wallonia.

Despite the emphasis by policy makers and university leaders on the necessity of bridging disciplines and expertises of all sorts toward solutions to Grand Societal Challenges, the in-depth practice of interdisciplinarity remains difficult and marginal. Such endeavors usually face obstacles. One of them are existing hierarchies between disciplines and between researchers- both in universities and in the research community itself. This assumption emerged from discussions between the article’s authors at the first Circle U-Global Health meeting last September in Louvain-La-Neuve. The goal of our contribution is to carefully build up on the hierarchy-hypothesis as one crucial yet under-studied obstacle to interdisciplinarity in research work. The hierarchical nature of academia, materialized in the differential of value given to disciplines and methodologies used or the evaluation of researchers’ performance have led to the creation of a totem pole: a ladder of challenges that must be overcome in order to perform interdisciplinary work. In a first part, we will identify hierarchies in research work and at what crucial moments they appear. We will then review the scientific and non-scientific explanations for the separation of disciplines in the first place that led to hierarchies. In particular we will look at individual and institutional gatekeeping attitudes in universities and in the research community. The deleterious aspect of hierarchies will be analysed in a third section. Questioning hierarchies as a potential obstacle to interdisciplinarity becomes even more significant at a time when the environmental crisis made us aware of how catastrophic the positivistic decision of drawing the disciplinary border was. These new global issues have led to a renewal of longing for old unity of intents all around the globe, hence the flourishing of transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary new fields - such as Ethnobiology, Environmental Humanities, Digital Humanities,One Heal

Le théâtre théorique (TT) est une innovation pédagogique où des enseignant∙e∙s incarnent des théories concurrentes en sciences sociales et confrontent, dans un scénario pré-établi, leur portée respective dans la compréhension et la résolution d’un problème sociétal. Par le jeu du TT, les étudiant-e-s acquièrent plus facilement les attendus du cours, la théorie est rendue plus attractive et facile à mobiliser dans l’expérience quotidienne des étudiant-e-s. Mais ce type d’innovation développe également de nouvelles compétences chez l’enseignant-e. A partir d’une expérience menée dans le cadre d’un cours d’Histoire et courants de pensée en économie à l’UCL, cet article démontre l’importance du travail de transposition (des théories en personnages d’une part, de la confrontation des idées en jeu théâtral d’autre part) dans cette innovation. Bien que son rôle ne soit pas mentionné dans la littérature sur le TT, il s’agit d’une compétence fondamentale pour la réussite de l’expérience. L’article identifie des pistes pour la rendre plus accessible et la professionnaliser dans le cadre de la pratique enseignante.

The Havana bay has been considered one of the most polluted bodies of water in the Caribbean. Indeed, the sewage discharge from the city causes eutrophication and oxygen depletion of water bodies leading to drastic consequences for the ecosystem. A less known cause of eutrophication is the presence of suspended low-density microplastics like polyethylene and polypropylene, which may be present at the bay of Havana due to the disintegration of larger plastic pieces dumped into the water. Yet there is no efficient tool available to monitor this kind of pollution in Cuba. This limitation has been explicitly recognized by the Cuban authorities and is intimately related to the national context: the falling of the former socialist block in the early 1990’s and the increased tightening of the US embargo against the country has resulted in a weakening of Cuban science over the last decades. When it comes to monitoring and improving the quality of water in the coastal waters of Cuba, scientists thus face challenges like producing environmentally reliable data (1) and having access to cost-effective measurement devices (2). A further challenge is the lack of a multidisciplinary community (scientific, technical and social) able to tackle the previous challenges, and transfer the knowledge acquired in the process both at the technical and at the social levels (3). Issues 1 and 2 -handled through three specific PhD in this project- are in strong relation with the Sustainable Development Goals and as such, would benefit from the involvement of academia, citizen and entrepreneurs when looking for solutions. Fablabs can provide the synergies between different actors in the ecosystem (Valenzuela-Zubiaur et al., 2021). They show the growing involvement of citizens in the manufacture of objects that were previously the prerogative of (expensive and/or unsustainable) industries. These forms of experimentation are socially innovative insofar as they arise from the needs of actors to sha

Over the past two decades, organizational sustainability has been studied from several different perspectives, such as marketing, governance, strategy, and human resource management (HRM). However, sustainability framed in HRM has not yet received enough attention in the literature, especially as it concerns the study of different organizational forms. Building on Enhert and Harry’s (2012) sustainable HRM approach, this article studies worker empowerment and how it affects organizational performance in terms of service quality and service innovation. Specifically, it addresses how relational motivations interact with HR-empowering practices (involvement in decisions and task autonomy) as organizational resources in influencing performance, how workload pressure resulting from HR empowerment can improve performance, and the influence of gender on performance, especially with concerns for human capital (tertiary education) and motivations. To this end, a representative sample of workers employed by Italian social enterprises (ES) in the social service sector is used. We propose multilevel SEMs that are based on two sets of equations specifying worker- and organization-level effects on organizational performance. Our main results show that the combination of worker engagement and an appropriate relational context in the organizational environment is most conducive to delivering better and innovative services. In addition, a higher percentage of well-trained and relationally motivated women employees helps achieve this goal.

This research attempts to study the social representations underlying health and care social innovations (HCSI) implemented in Wallonia, Belgium to shift ageing policies and management towards the ageing in place paradigm. A panel of 34 experts was interviewed to understand their representations using a Delphi-based methodology. The data were processed using thematic content analysis. The core of social representations of health and care social innovations was related to five key dimensions: D1, responding to unmet or emerging health and care needs; D2, defining (new) targets and beneficiaries of HCSI; D3, disrupting care practices; D4, mobilising a network of key actors; and D5, encouraging political recognition of HCSI to favour its viability and sustainability. Local stakeholders' social representations tended to recognise only the goal-oriented dimensions in innovations and ignore process-oriented aspects. The blind spots for workers' participation and empowerment may jeopardise their working conditions, causing a cascade effect on the quality of services and the care relationship. This affected how health and care organisations responded to innovation and might also compromise the long-term sustainability of ageing in place practices in Wallonia., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Electronic and mobile healthcare services (e/mCare&Health) relying on information and communication technology such as computers and mobile phones are increasingly becoming standard for care and disease prevention or management. With new virus outbreaks, e/m-Care&Health has gained momentum and becomes a major instrument for enhancing sustainability in health systems. However, improving truly healthcare while addressing both current ecological challenges such as the finite nature of resources, greenhouse-gas (GHG) emission reduction targets, and social challenges such as health inequities, system innovations should differ substantially from mainstream (technical and product-driven) innovations. To date, very few authors investigated how the environment could be integrated into the various assessment methods of care and health technology, considering that the healthcare sector itself generates significant environment impacts including GHG emissions, air pollution, and plastic and pharmaceutical waste. The question if and to what extent current e/m-Care&Health innovations are positioning care and health systems on a more sustainable trajectory remains unclear, as are the dimensions that define sustainable innovations and sustainability transitions in care and health systems. An in-depth understanding of the sustainability of e/m-Care&Health innovations is essential to unleash their ability to provide a systemic solution for charting a sustainable path forward. This calls for looking beyond the technicalities of e/m-Care&Health innovations and studying work and business model issues, environmental aspects, users’ position within health systems as well as health policies themselves. This paper reflects on the evaluation of e/m-Care&Health solutions beyond their clinical efficiency and potential cost savings. Using literature review and borrowing an interdisciplinary dialogue, this paper examines four specific dimensions of e/m-Care&Health innovations that relate to their

This Ph.D. aims at clarifying the future trajectories of the Walloon dairy sector, based on a study of the strategies and constraints of dairy cooperatives as collective agents. From a systemic perspective, the Ph.D. considers, on the one hand, the dairy cooperatives’ strategies within a given context, and the impact of that context on their strategies. On the other hand, dairy cooperatives are approached as structures of collective action, interplaying in terms of governance with its farmers-members. The focus lies on an in-depth understanding of the factors enabling or disabling certain trajectories, in particular the trajectories of product diversification (productions other than drinking milk, milk powder, butter; productions relying on a definition of milk quality broader than that of industrial standard raw material). The Ph.D. consists of four parts: a historical investigation, an analysis of coordination models in the dairy value chain, a study of the co-existence of cooperative models today, and a zoom on how farmers relate to the dairy value chain. The Ph.D. uncovers that different models of horizontal and vertical coordination may co-exist, beyond the classic model of vertical integration, and that a combination of different models of coordination may support a transition towards a diversification of dairy productions at regional scale. The Ph.D. also highlights a structural tension between the short-term interests of the dairy farmers as milk suppliers and their long-term interests as cooperative members. This tension can influence the strategic choices of cooperatives, which implies that attention must be paid on how dairy farmers relate to collective action., (AGRO - Sciences agronomiques et ingénierie biologique) -- UCL, 2021

Les innovations pédagogiques dans l’enseignement universitaire font l’objet d’un intérêt croissant, tant dans la littérature scientifique que chez les acteurs et actrices des politiques d’enseignement. De natures très diverses, elles sont au cœur des stratégies d’adaptation des universités aux problématiques sociétales émergentes, tout en étant considérées comme une source importante de motivation à apprendre (pour l’étudiant∙e) et à enseigner (pour l’enseignant∙e). En mobilisant le jeu et la simulation au sein de groupes d’étudiant·es, le théâtre théorique (TT) permet de réfléchir aux grands enjeux sociétaux tout en démontrant la valeur des travaux de recherche et des théories

The last few years witnessed theoretical and practical contributions to the field of social innovation and social enterprise. However, analysis of the interplay between these two different realms is still limited. This article aims to fill some gaps in this respect. We deal with historical reconstruction of the concept of Social Enterprise and Social Innovation, and their conceptual premises. We consider the process of creation of social innovation in social enterprises. As members’ motivations, ownership rights and governance rules in social enterprises create a new relational context and new routines, which are germane to the production of social knowledge and deliberation, social innovation can be considered one of the main outcomes of this setting. Social motivations, collective action of a cooperative kind, multi‐stakeholder governance and socialization of resources, and their interplay are singled out as main drivers of innovation. Social innovation is seen as akin to novelty in social interaction, a non‐standardized and non‐standardizable outcome of the operation of this organizational form.

Our aim in this article is to bring transformative social innovation (TSI) as developed by the Centre de Recherche sur l’Innovation Sociale (CRISES) from Québec (1-2) into dialogue with Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) which is one of the main approaches within the field of transition studies (TS) (3-4-5-6). Both TSI and MLP focus on the dynamics of innovation in relation with broader societal change and sustainable development, but differ regarding their object, analytical and normative framework. The MLP's pioneering work focused on radical environmental innovation rather than on the dominant socio-technical paradigm (7-8-9). Socio-technical transitions are deep transformations that affect systems (i.e. the agri-food system) at different levels (niches, regimes and landscapes). These changes concern certainly technology but also science, markets, policy, culture, etc. (8). Notably, this approach has zoomed in on diverse actors (3-5-6), but the innovating potential of the third-sector remains understudied (3-4). For the early TSI literature, innovation mainly questions the societal paradigm. Research focused on grassroots social initiatives, reconfiguration of welfare states and new services organized within the third-sector on a territorial basis (10, 11) (i.e. care related services). Despite of these fundamental differences, both approaches share some theoretical affinities (such as the influence of evolutionary economics). Most importantly, we suggest that they are currently experiencing some sort of convergence. On one hand, recent developments within the CRISES framework tend to adopt generational lenses and point the emergence of a new generation of TSI articulated to the ecological crises and the transition movement. This new generation seems to affect the previous ones in an unprecedented way. On the other hand, recent developments in ST/MLP studies, are considering TSI as a key concept in order to understand sustainable transitions (idea of “transition throug

Considering insights from socio-economics, work psychology, and occupational health, this study focuses on the job satisfaction and well-being of employees working in nonprofit social enterprises (SE). We question the idea suggested by the recent literature that working for a SE brings employees a high level of job satisfaction and well-being. We also investigate whether being involved in social innovation is associated with even higher job satisfaction and well-being. Indeed, understood as a manifestation of positive social change, social innovation is expected to improve outcomes such as the quality of life at work. However, because social innovation is an umbrella concept, it embraces different innovation-related concepts. Here we explore the distinction between service innovation and workplace innovation. This article applies a multivariate analysis to an original dataset covering 1134 employees working in the field of elder homecare in Wallonia. Its implications for social entrepreneurs and scholars are also examined.

Cette thèse explore les pratiques de paternité dans le contexte andin urbain, s’intéressant aux dynamiques sociales à l’œuvre dans la construction de ces pratiques. Partant d’une enquête mixte (associant méthodes qualitatives et quantitatives) menée dans la ville d’Ayacucho (Pérou), elle se construit en trois temps. Dans un premier temps, il s’agit d’appréhender les pratiques de paternité en contexte, soit ancrées dans des dispositifs d’organisation du soin aux jeunes enfants : qui s’occupe des jeunes enfants à Ayacucho et comment se situent les pères dans cette organisation de la prise en charge ? Une fois ce décor planté, la thèse plonge dans les différentes formes de pratiques de paternité en proposant une typologie idéal-typique composée de quatre types : le père pourvoyeur de soin, le père aidant de la pourvoyeuse de soin, le père dans le jeu et le père principalement pourvoyeur de ressources. Enfin, dans un dernier temps, en sondant les systèmes de représentations associés à ces différents types de pratiques de paternité, il s’agit de mettre au jour les modèles sociaux en jeu dans la construction de ces pratiques et les interactions sociales dans lesquelles ces modèles s’actualisent. Deux types de modèles sont ainsi identifiés, qui interagissent et se croisent sans se confondre : des modèles de masculinité (hégémoniques et non hégémoniques) et des modèles familiaux (individualiste et communautaire)., (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2018

In the last few years, there have been many theoretical and practical contributions to the issue of social innovation and social enterprises. However, most of them lack to analyze the existing link between these two topics. This is the editorial article to the JEOD Special Issue on “Social innovation in Social enterprises: What is going on?” that aims to fill such a gap. In particular, the issue presents the theoretical implications, central aspects and some case studies on social innovation in social enterprises. Finally, the editorial concludes by presenting a summary of each articles.