7,966 research outputs found

    Governance of Environment-Enhancing Technical change - past experiences and suggestions for improvement

    Get PDF
    There is much talk about environmental policies being faulty. Past policies are being criticisedfor failing to achieve environmental goals (the environmentalist complaint), for being overlyexpensive (the industrialist complaint) and for failing to encourage innovation and dynamicefficiency (the complaint of economists dealing with innovation). This paper looks at theinnovation and technology adoption effects of past environmental policies. It finds indeed fewexamples of environmental policies that stimulated innovation. The common technologyresponse is the use of expensive end-of-pipe solutions and incremental process changesoffering limited environmental gains. This begs the question: why did the policies fail topromote more radical innovation and dynamic efficiency? One explanation—well-recognisedin the economic literature—is the capture of government policies by special interests. Thispaper offers a second explanation—based on innovation and technology adoption studies—which says that in order to have a decisive and socially beneficial influence policy instrumentsmust be fine-tuned to the circumstances in which sociotechnical change processes occur and tipthe balance. Within this alternative view, the starting point of government interventions is thecapabilities, interests, interdependencies and games of social actors around an environmentalproblem instead of the set of environmental policy instruments for achieving an environmentalgoal. The paper sees a need for government authorities to be explicitly concerned with technicalchange (rather than implicitly through a change in the economic frame conditions) and to beconcerned with institutional arrangements beyond the choice of policy instruments, and act as achange agent. This requires different roles for policy makers: that of a sponsor, planner,regulator, matchmaker, alignment actor and ‘creative game regulator’. The paper offers twoperspectives on environmental policy: an instrument one and a modulation one. The latter isespecially important for promoting innovation and bringing about radical change, somethingwhich is very difficult with traditional regulatory instruments. Instruments for promotingenvironment-enhancing technical change are appraised and suggestions are offered for thepurposes for which different policy instruments may be used in differing economic contexts.environmental economics ;

    Strategic Alignment: What Else? A Practice Based View of IS Value.

    Get PDF
    Pour l’essentiel, les recherches traitant des valeurs stratĂ©giques du SI restent dans le paradigme de l’alignement stratĂ©gique, et utilisent des notions telles que celles de "processus" ou "d’activitĂ©s". En s’appuyant sur la perspective offerte par les thĂ©ories de la pratique, cet article offre une alternative en distinguant trois formes de praxis et des valeurs spĂ©cifiques.Literature about IS strategic management or IS strategic value is abundant. Nonetheless, the bulk of existing studies are focused on the concept of alignment. They do not make sense of a strategic value "in practice" and still draw on notions such as activity or process to make sense of alignment. By means of a practice-based view of technology, three praxis are suggested here for the modeling of strategic value: legitimacy-related (based on adoption praxis), assimilative (related to design and acceptance praxis) and appropriative (linked to local adaptation and improvisation praxis). They are introduced by means of a "thought experiment" (a short story about a rifle).Strategic alignment; IS strategic value; Practice-based views; strategic value in practice; thought experiments;

    Comparing nuclear power trajectories in Germany and the UK: from ‘regimes' to ‘democracies’ in sociotechnical transitions and Discontinuities

    Get PDF
    This paper focuses on arguably the single most striking contrast in contemporary major energy politics in Europe (and even the developed world as a whole): the starkly differing civil nuclear policies of Germany and the UK. Germany is seeking entirely to phase out nuclear power by 2022. Yet the UK advocates a ‘nuclear renaissance’, promoting the most ambitious new nuclear construction programme in Western Europe.Here,this paper poses a simple yet quite fundamental question: what are the particular divergent conditions most strongly implicated in the contrasting developments in these two countries. With nuclear playing such an iconic role in historical discussions over technological continuity and transformation, answering this may assist in wider understandings of sociotechnical incumbency and discontinuity in the burgeoning field of‘sustainability transitions’. To this end, an ‘abductive’ approach is taken: deploying nine potentially relevant criteria for understanding the different directions pursued in Germany and the UK. Together constituted by 30 parameters spanning literatures related to socio-technical regimes in general as well as nuclear technology in particular, the criteria are divided into those that are ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to the ‘focal regime configuration’ of nuclear power and associated ‘challenger technologies’ like renewables. It is ‘internal’ criteria that are emphasised in conventional sociotechnical regime theory, with ‘external’ criteria relatively less well explored. Asking under each criterion whether attempted discontinuation of nuclear power would be more likely in Germany or the UK, a clear picture emerges. ‘Internal’ criteria suggest attempted nuclear discontinuation should be more likely in the UK than in Germany– the reverse of what is occurring. ‘External’ criteria are more aligned with observed dynamics –especially those relating to military nuclear commitments and broader ‘qualities of democracy’. Despite many differences of framing concerning exactly what constitutes ‘democracy’, a rich political science literature on this point is unanimous in characterising Germany more positively than the UK. Although based only on a single case,a potentially important question is nonetheless raised as to whether sociotechnical regime theory might usefully give greater attention to the general importance of various aspects of democracy in constituting conditions for significant technological discontinuities and transformations. If so, the policy implications are significant. A number of important areas are identified for future research, including the roles of diverse understandings and specific aspects of democracy and the particular relevance of military nuclear commitments– whose under-discussion in civil nuclear policy literatures raises its own questions of democratic accountability

    Modelling Sociotechnical Change in IS with a Quantitative Longitudinal Approach: The PPR Method.

    Get PDF
    The following article suggests a critical realistic framework, which aims at modeling sociotechnical change linked to end-users' IT appropriation: the "archetypal approach". The basic situations it includes (the "sociotechnical archetypes"), and the possible appropriative trajectories that combine them, together with three propositions linked to the model, are developed. They are illustrated by means of a case study describing the implementation of an e-learning system within a French university. The paper then presents an instrumentation of the theoretical framework, based on a quantitative longitudinal approach: the Process Patterns Recognition (PPR) method. This one draws mainly on Doty, Glick and Huber (1993, 1994) who propose to evaluate the distance between organizational archetypes and empirical configurations by means of Euclidean distance calculus. The adaptation consists in evaluating the distance between appropriative trajectories (embodied by series of theoretically specified vectors) and empirical processes linked to the implementation of computerized tools in organizations. The PPR method is then applied to the same organizational setting as the one related to the case study. It validates the relevance of this type of a research strategy, which makes it possible to model sociotechnical dynamics related to end-users' IT appropriations.Technology-organization interaction; sociotechnical process modelling; Process Patterns Recognition; critical realism; Structuration; methodology of research; longitudinal methods; e-learning;

    The evolution of tropos: Contexts, commitments and adaptivity

    Get PDF
    Software evolution is the main research focus of the Tropos group at University of Trento (UniTN): how do we build systems that are aware of their requirements, and are able to dynamically reconïŹgure themselves in response to changes in context (the environment within which they operate) and requirements. The purpose of this report is to offer an overview of ongoing work at UniTN. In particular, the report presents ideas and results of four lines of research: contextual requirements modeling and reasoning, commitments and goal models, developing self-reconïŹgurable systems, and requirements awareness
    • 

    corecore