Forming and transforming a multi-layered institutional field: social innovation in South Korea

Social innovation has emerged as a globally significant discourse for tackling complex social, economic and environmental challenges through collaboration among governments, markets and civil society. In South Korea, rapid economic and social change has intensified various social problems, prompting growing interest in social innovation discourse, which was originally developed in Europe and the United States as an alternative approach to addressing these challenges. Social innovation in South Korea can be understood as a multi-layered institutional field shaped by diverse actors across public, private and civil society sectors, each advancing distinct values and practices informed by their own institutional logic. However, prior studies of South Korea's social innovation have often portrayed social innovation either as a linear developmental trajectory or through a dichotomous lens of state-led versus market-led models, thus failing to capture the complex structure of the field and the dynamic interactions among actors. Drawing on the institutional logic perspective, this study analyses how and why South Korea's social innovation field has been formed by actors embedded in different institutional logics. It reveals the field's complex configuration and inter-actor dynamics and proposes a new analytical framework for understanding the institutional changes surrounding social innovation in South Korea.