Social innovation or compensation? Reflections on corporate practices

Abstract

Fractures in the wage-base society and the increased precariousness of the living conditions across the globe have made different sectors to get involved in social action. The article examines the role of corporations in facing social problems on the basis of a debate about the rationality underlying the model of globalized development (guided by the lazy reason of Boaventura Santos) and of an analysis of the connection of the economy in social structure (through economic sociology). The results demonstrate that practices that are considered innovative by corporations hardly go beyond the level of compensation, which is due to the permanence of the principles of the market rationality. The genuine social innovation must consider a perspective of development based on the substantive freedoms of human beings and be able to establish the effective participation of subjects in the production process of innovation and in the appropriation of its results.