• UNICA
• Scentiss
• Impact Explorer
• Opportunities for transformative change in the care sector

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine De Moor

The new bottom-up and self-governing institutions for the provisioning of energy, food, care and many other goods and services that are currently increasingly being set up by citizens have many similarities in institutional design with guilds, commons, cooperatives and other institutions that have been developed in Europe’s history. UNICA aims at building a unified theory that explains the factors behind the development and spread of institutions for collective action (ICAs) across Europe over the past millennium, and that identifies which elements have contributed to the claim they would be more resilient than top-down, share-holder types of organisations. Hereby a novel conceptual framework for the historical study of various types of institutions for collective action (ICAs) will be applied in order to capture the dynamic interaction between membership, institutional features and resources of ICAs. The project will allow us to connect micro-changes to macro-results, and to reflect on the potential outcomes of the current new wave of institutions for collective action. Read more about UNICA on the website of research group Social Enterprises & Institutions for Collective Action. 

Scentiss

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine De Moor, Energie Samen, Municipality of Amsterdam

Social and community-driven entrepreneurs (SCEs) identify neglected societal problems and provide innovative solutions. But SCEs struggle with scaling up their initiatives to achieve their full potential. Multiple stakeholders add to complexity and dominant actors present barriers for scaling. This is where Scentiss comes in. The Scentiss research project puts together a unique multidisciplinary consortium of academic researchers, SCEs and stakeholders to tackle these challenges. Our overall goal is to develop new knowledge that boosts scaling up of social entrepreneurship and its innovative solutions, based on collaborative learning processes and novel tools. The Scentiss project has five main goals:

1. Studying in which way the entrepreneurial ecosystem for SCEs that focus of energy and local healthcare transitions, may facilitate or hinder the flourishing and scaling of such entrepreneurship, as well as the ways in which this ecosystem and the broader context are influenced by entrepreneurs and stakeholders to become more facilitative.
2. Introducing a new, ready-to-use and open-access, digital tool for impact management and measurement. The tool can be used by SCEs, policymakers, financers and others to monitor and steer progress on intended impact.
3. Systematically build a participatory learning approach which helps SCE’s to flourish and scale through improvements to their ecosystem.
4. Examine which innovative organizational, financial and business models help SCEs flourish and scale. It will specifically focus on multipurpose SCEs.
5. Culminating the learnings of the project in an intensive learning track for professionals (policymakers, project managers) who aim to facilitate transitions by adopting SCE mechanisms.

The full consortium can be viewed here.

Impact Explorer

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine de Moor

Due to the work for the UNICA project (see above), the importance of network strategies for the current waves of citizen collectives and other institutions for collective actions became apparent. To mitigate this, NWO has granted prof. dr. Tine De Moor an Impact Explorer Grant, with which we can put a knowledge broker to work through CollectieveKracht. This knowledge broker will identify knowledge that is potentially relevant to the movement. The knowledge broker will talk with the individual citizens collectives and talk to them about their data. During this conversation, the knowledge broker can actively gather insights about how the collectives gather and use data.

By stimulating and helping citizens collectives with collecting, storing and sharing data the knowledge broker can help future research to access more data to create a better image of citizens collectives.

Opportunities for transformative change in the care sector

Involved: Prof. dr. Tine De Moor

In order to guarantee quality and accessibility, care must be sustainable in terms of financial means, personnel, and public support. However, these three dimensions of sustainability are under increasing pressure due to a number of developments. To mitigate the care gap, transformative change that fundamentally shifts current behavioural, economic, social, cultural, institutional, and technological trajectories is necessary. So far, many governmental and care institutions are struggling to bring about the needed transformative change. At the same time, there are an increasing number of examples of citizen collectives and institutions for collective action (ICAs) spread throughout the Netherlands focusing on (health)care services. However, no extensive research has been done to this day. Supervised by prof.dr. T. De Moor, health scientist Eveline Castelijns, with 15 years of experience at the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports and the healthcare team at Berenschot consultancy, is conducting a part-time PhD project to explore the potential of these ICAs to guide or accelerate transformative change in the Dutch care ecosystem.