Exploring the paper Mazzucato, M., 2018. Mission-oriented innovation policies: challenges and opportunities. Industrial and corporate change, 27(5), pp.803-815.
Blog three of five, in a series by Dr Chrissi McCarthy.
In the last blog, we considered the challenges of the business case, and how they prevented it from having the transformative impact we desired. So let’s turn to the social case, which arose as a response.
The social case: it’s the right thing to do.
This one is a bit harder for me, mainly because ideologically I align with the social case. It feels important to strive to do good; it’s a core part of the human experience.
However, when we put the social case into organisations, the wheels can start to come off the wagon. There are three main challenges.
- What is “the right thing to do”?
- Whose moral principles?
- Attitudes lead to behaviours
Let me explain.
What is the right thing to do?
What even is the right thing to do?
If you are a university, is it the right thing to offer free education to all?
If you are a mechanical company, should you fix everyone’s boiler in the winter?
I mean, it’s the right thing to do. Isn’t it?
Maybe that’s hyperbolic, but it serves a point.
Where does the right thing to do stop? Who is it right for? Who is deciding what and how much of it?
When we lead with the right thing to do, it can feel like we have to do everything.
Even if we have a plan in place, it can be very hard to defend it, to explain why this right thing and not that one. This inevitably leads to scope creep as our action plans turn into unabridged volumes.
The right thing to do is vast, and it can lead to never-ending action plans that are never achieved.
By trying to do it all, we end up doing too much and achieving very little.
Whose moral principles?
There can be a temptation to place EDI as a moral “right”, I know, I often do it myself.
However, there is a sea of nuance within EDI, which means not only is there a debate about what is right, but also a danger that moral positioning can shut down conversations rather than encourage dialogue that leads to healthy solutions.
More importantly, within organisations, those who believe the work is “right” are more likely to undertake it.
Which means the job is more likely to fall to marginalised groups, whilst being undervalued by those who have not encountered similar experiences.
Put simply, it means those who are marginalised do more and are valued less.
Usually, on top of an already existing workload, with little support.
I have seen this approach lead to more overwhelm and burnout than change.
Attitudes lead to behaviours.
This is an interesting one, and as ever, it involves my favourite thing, context.
Our attitudes can lead to our behaviours.
However, our environments are usually more powerful.
The social case relies on the premise that if we believe in it, we will take action.
However, our research shows that even when people held strong personal attitudes in support of EDI, if their organisation was perceived as unfair, they were more likely to be resistant to equality initiatives.
That means environmental factors are stronger predictors of engagement with equality work than attitudes.
So even if people are morally aligned, they might not support the EDI work, further diminishing its perceived value.
What’s the outcome?
Overall, the social case rests on many assumptions, assumptions that evidence does not support.
It’s not that as people we are not good, it’s that we are often busy, confused and misdirected.
When we position EDI work through the social value lens, it can increase these challenges.
- Too broad a remit of work
- Overwhelm and burnout
- Undervalued work
The social value case often reproduces many of the challenges it aims to fix.
Except in cases of exceptional leadership, it does not present a practical lens for creating organisational change.
We need a different approach, something that takes the positives from the business and social cases while avoiding the pitfalls.
In the next blog, we find our way to the middle. Drawing on both the business and social cases, we consider a mission-oriented approach.
