investigating the Social Innovation Evaluation and providing a framework through exploration of multi-vocal literature

Social innovation is set forth as a new way to deal with complicated social needs. Interest in social innovation has taken an upward trend to the extent that it has been named a global attraction. Assessment of social innovations and their effects as one of the other key aspects of advancement of social innovation at regional and organizational level is of importance. In fact, assessment of social innovation is considered as a priority for policy making; because, if not assessed and evaluated, it cannot be achieved. Lack of a general overview on existing patterns of social innovation and the knowledge about its evaluation is indicative of a research gap and challenge created in performing future studies. The researcher has set two questions so that through related multi-vocal literature, social innovation would be defined and evaluated. In this respect and through study of 1480 collected researches, in-depth study has been performed on 112 researches so that research questions would be answered. Finally, after social innovation being defined by the author, elements of social innovation evaluation have been provided in three social, environmental, and financial levels. Provided framework has 3 categories and 17 concepts, as well as 63 codes obtained through review of thematic literature and views provided by experts dominating the field. Kappa coefficient being 0.721 confirms quality of the framework provided