1st edition of the symposium on
Innovation in Service, Organizations and Society (SOS) in Emerging Countries
12-13 December 2018
Sheraton Hotel, Casablanca-Morocco
Committee: Badia Oulhadj, Wafa Hammedi, Djamel Khouatra, Linda Nasr
Deadline abstract: 15 July 2018
The organizational, technological and societal changes are imperative for both developed and emerging economies. According to Schumpeter, (1942) these changes are regularly addressed from an economic viewpoint. However, to conciliate social, cultural, and environmental pillars, a more systemic approach to innovation is highly recommended. An approach that combines smart and innovative governance with resource management in order to better meet the needs of organizations, companies, and citizens is needed. In a market economy, technological innovation plays a very important role, yet, it is not sufficient if it does not create stakeholder value and contribute to environmental and social challenges. Several terminologies such as « future cities », « compact cities », « innovative cities », « eco city », « intelligent cities » or « green cities » are used in a recurring way to characterize tomorrow’s cities, ecosystems and economies. In the « Smart cities » context, technological innovation regains its place as an economical and societal development driver, yet it has to be deployed in addition to a more global strategy consisting of constructing a territory, a city or a region meeting the needs of citizens in the long term. The infusion of technologies have to be carefully orchestrated in governance, through transparency and openness towards all actors involved in the development of the territory, city or country.
The promotion of smart economy therefore gives consideration to innovation at multi-level with multiple actors within an ecosystem of companies, and the society at large. This new perspective aims at putting the citizen at the heart of the innovation process and therefore, creating other democratic links between rulers and citizens. A Smart and responsible city aims, among other things, to improve the life quality and the governance but also allows a sustainable economic development. It has to lead to evolving the citizen’s behavior who, in their turn, will adopt more proactive behaviors.
On the other hand, in a context of budgetary restrictions to which public organizations (state and local communities) are subject to, innovation is an important lever of enhancement of efficacy and efficiency of the public action as well as of the quality of public services. As public organizations are constrained to « do better with less », public innovation appears to be a suitable way for embracing environmental transformations. Innovations to which public organizations can resort to, have different forms: organizational, managerial and relational. The assessment of public innovation processes is an essential theme of the public management research (De Vries and al., 2015). We find, in the literature, some non-converging typologies of public innovation. How can we, then, define and measure public innovation comparatively to private innovation? Is it sufficient to elaborate a model of public innovation applicable to all public organizations? What are the determinants of public innovation on which public authorities should act? On the other hand, what are the restraints and obstacles that hinder public innovation? The change processes in public organizations come up against a resistance and against restraints of structural, strategic and behavioral order ( Bartoli et Blatrix,2015). How can public organizations conciliate change generating innovations and an effective management of their human potential? The question of the governance of innovation processes associating public and private partners under the framework of inter-organizational networks, also, deserves to be explored.
This international symposium is aimed to be a unique platform for exchanges and reflections on the future economy. Through this event, we intend to shed light on major contemporary problems and, on the other hand, to highlight technological, organizational, institutional and societal innovations coming from emerging economies. This international symposium aims at enabling propositions and explorations of alternative models and to stimulate experience sharing between academics and professionals from different countries.
As a reference, and without it being an exhaustive list, the following themes can be studied:
- Digital economy
- Smart consumption ( eg: collaborative consumption)
- Smart governance
- Services innovation (eg : Health, transport)
- Service design
- Innovation and well-being
- Innovation in ecosystems
- Territorial innovation
- Innovation in Public Sector
- Societal innovation
- Innovations and social entrepreneurship
Key dates:
- 01 July 2018: Deadline for sending abstract
- 01 SEPTEMBER 2018: Full papers submission
- 30 September 2018: Final decisions are sent to the authors.
- 30 October 2018: Deadline to receive the full papers with the required modifications.
Communication/Paper types:
The communications can be submitted either in French or English. Two types of presentations are possible:
- Research presentation: Work of ongoing research realized by researchers or PhD students.
- Professional presentation: Professionals, firms, or active public actors in the field willing to share their experience about concrete projects, which deal with a specific service innovation (technological or not), an organizational innovation, or a societal innovation. The originality of the project as well as its identity “made in” emerging countries are important criteria for the selection of this type of communications.
Submission Standards:
The intentions of communication (abstract) have to be sent before the 15th July 2018 under the form of a summary of a maximum of 4500 characters (including space) mentioning the title of the presentation, the type of the presentation (research paper, testimony, or ongoing PhD thesis), the authors with their contact information and affiliations. Please also mention explicitly who is the contact author.
The final submissions of a maximum length of 15 pages or 40 000 characters (including space) have to be sent before 1st September 2018.
