Suchergebnisse

There is no evidence-based discussion on the intended and unintended global social impacts, such as changes in employment, of the European Union's (EU) transition towards the Circular Economy (CE). Consequently, its ethical implications are nebulous. Therefore, this paper assesses CE-induced global employment shifts using the example of the apparel value chains of apparel imported to the EU from the top five exporting countries: China, Bangladesh, India, Turkey and Cambodia. The discussion of the results is based on the ethical framework for global transformative change that applies justice considerations on sustainability transitions. This paper is the first sector-specific quantitative study on the employment effects of the EU transition on a global scale, including ethical dimensions of those effects, as far as we are aware. Overall, this paper contributes to the broader discussion of CE-induced social effects of sustainability transitions. Its results indicate that employment could significantly decrease in low- to upper-middle-income countries outside the EU, in particular in labour-intense apparel production. Employment could increase in less-labour intense downstream reuse and recycling activities in the EU and second-hand retail in- and outside the EU. From an ethical perspective, the benefits and disadvantages of the circular transition seem to be unevenly distributed, with the main adverse effects to be carried by non-EU stakeholders.

CO2 capture and storage (CCS) represents an important option to mitigate climate change. However, the implementation of CCS is slow. We analysed one of the unsuccessful projects in the Netherlands that is referred to as the Barendrecht CO2 storage project, with an emphasis on the role of the national government. We performed an event analysis based on debates in the Dutch Parliament, interviews with the relevant stakeholders and published literature. We show that the opinion of the national government regarding this project changed over time. Consensus on the necessity of CCS was assumed at the start of the project. However, over time, the local opposition intensified, and both CCS as a climate mitigation strategy and its implementation, including its location, were contested. An important contributor was the lack of solid outside support, whereas the views of opponents were strongly represented. Additionally, due to multiple delays, the momentum was lost, which ended the enthusiasm of initial supporters. To ensure implementation of future CCS projects, overall national support should therefore be guaranteed prior to the start of the project.

The technological innovation systems framework (TIS) is widely used to study the emergence and growth of new technological fields and industries. At the same time, it has been criticized for a number of issues and innovation scholars have made suggestions of how to improve the framework. In this viewpoint, we respond to six areas of criticism: (1) TIS context, (2) system delineation, (3) spatial aspects, (4) transitions, (5) politics, and (6) policy recommendations. We point to promising conceptual developments of how to address shortcomings and highlight needs for further research. We also discuss the prospects of the TIS approach for the analysis of socio-technical transitions. The TIS framework, in our view, has the potential to outgrow its original scope - explaining the dynamics and performance of a technological field - and to address many of the issues relevant when studying transitions.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the United Nations are a call to action for policy-makers around the globe to tackle grand societal challenges. Sustainability start-ups can help meet some of the most pressing challenges. Regions of start-up activity are commonly referred to as entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs), although the share of sustainability start-ups varies markedly from one EE to another. While literature on EEs is abundant, scholarly work on sustainability-oriented EEs, i.e. those with a high share of sustainability start-ups, is still relatively scarce. In particular, there is limited understanding of the reasons why some EEs have a higher share of sustainability start-ups than others. The present paper considers this gap in the literature by contrasting the EEs of Berlin and Lagos, which have very different shares of sustainability start-ups. Forty interviews conducted with founders, investors, hubs and government representatives in both EEs showed that particularly successful start-ups in an EE, so-called lighthouses, play an important role in shaping the cultural, social and material attributes of an EE. This means that the sustainability orientation of these lighthouses is instrumental in creating environments in which sustainability start-ups can flourish. Moreover, lighthouses can attract new talent and resources to a region, which further underlines their role as accelerators of an EE towards sustainability. Overall, the lighthouses are a critical factor in explaining the share of sustainability start-ups. Policy-makers can strengthen this effect by giving access to extra resources and opportunities to promising start-ups and by showcasing their success.

Abstract New technologies must be accompanied by institutional change. Innovative actors therefore need to do institutional work or take a role as an institutional entrepreneur in order to shape the institutions in the best interests of their technology. However, the literature on system building and on institutional entrepreneurship have little overlap. The goal of this paper is to bridge these two bodies of literature to gain additional insights into how institutional change evolves in a technological innovation system. We show how the pharmaceutical firm Roche acted as a powerful institutional entrepreneur by influencing the health-care system in England to create a market for the personalized cancer drug Herceptin®. We demonstrate that institutional change can be preceded by a range of innovation system-building activities that are not directly intended to bring about institutional change but are required in order for institutional change to take place. Through this case study, we show how the system-building and institutional change literature can complement each other.

This special issue reports some results presented at the 5th International Sustainability Transitions (IST) conference, which took place in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The guiding theme of the conference was "Impact and Institutions". With regard to "Impact", various sessions devoted attention to the practical applicability of transitions research and addressed the question: Do the insights, theoretical models and new theory development sufficiently spill over to the policy and business domains? The focus on institutions reflected the observation that while the first years the community was busy establishing its identity and developing relevant new theoretical frameworks, the more established community is linking up with other areas of research. Whereas the majority of papers at previous conferences can be characterized as empirical applications of the main frameworks (SNM, MLP, TIS), now we observe a broadening where researchers strengthen the theoretical foundations of these frameworks by connecting the sustainability transitions literature to other relevant bodies of literature. Especially the link between transition and institutional theories is seen as a fruitful avenue for further research.