Introductory Search Strategy: Innovation in Third Sector Organisations
This research focusses on innovation in the role and service offering of third sector organisations (TSOs) in the UK from 2010. As a result, most research relates to social innovation and the influence of policy on the support offered by TSOs, rather than technological innovation.
The Open University library search totals 545 databases including larger broadly relevant databases such as JSTOR, Web of Science, and the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository, as well as more focussed databases (such as the British Library for Development Studies, and the British Education Index) which may return smaller case studies on specific TSOs. As such, it was deemed to be more than sufficient for a preliminary literature review.
An initial search was carried out for entries published within the last 10 years, including either of ‘third sector’ or ‘charity’, as well as ‘innovation’, and ‘UK’ anywhere within the entry. Although a publishing date post-2010 doesn’t necessitate the subject is restricted to this time period, it was a necessary starting filter. When this search was narrowed to include only peer-reviewed articles, in English, accessible online, it yielded ~160,000 results.
By reviewing the top results, it became apparent that most related to the third sector, but had little relation to innovation (which was often simply a ‘buzz word’ in the summary). As a result, the search was adjusted to return entries containing ‘third sector’ and ‘innovation’ in the title, with ‘UK’ required in any field. This significantly narrowed the results.
While other search terms, such as ‘non-profit’ were used during the search process, this yielded poor results due to the inclusion of anything containing ‘non-‘ in the title, even if this was irrelevant, e.g. ‘non-Newtonian’.
From these results, a manual filter was undertaken to omit articles focussed on locations outside the UK. An article considering the UK among other countries to examine ‘global trends’ was kept, however. It was also necessary to exclude articles primarily discussing organisational innovation, as the research objective was understanding the ways in which the services offered demonstrated innovation, an example ‘process innovation’ (as defined in OECD, 2005), rather than internal adjustments.
Finally, a subset of five articles were selected which based on the title, abstract, and description appeared to give the widest possible range of viewpoints and research motivations or sectors. This allows comparisons to be drawn between discussions of third sector innovation with healthcare, housing, or the influence of public policy on innovation management within the third sector.
