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

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 ;

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

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

A strategic niche management approach for shaping bio-based economy in Europe

The goal of this paper is to investigate the transition towards a bio-based economy as part of a broader sustainable transition in Europe. To analyse the challenges and opportunities associated with the bio-based economy, we applied the Strategic Niche Management approach to investigate the drivers that boost the emergence of the bio-based economy, the factors hindering it, as well as institutional changes which are at the base of the socio-technological transition. Although considered as just one piece of the sustainability puzzle, the bio-based economy behaves as a socio-technical system on its own, providing valuable hints on systemic transitions

Stimulating industrial ecosystems with sociotechnical imaginaries: The case of Renault Innovation Community

International audienceFacing the necessity to increase their innovation capabilities in a more and more holistic context, companies are creating new collaborative organizations aiming to collectively explore potential radical innovation fields. In this paper, we propose to study the nature of these new collectives for innovation through two managerial patterns: objects of collaboration and organizational mechanisms of coordination. Based on longitudinal collaborative research with the French carmaker Renault, the research analyses the case of the Renault Innovation Community, which involved members in original collaboration features to stimulate the industrial ecosystem of mobility and to support the potential emergence of new ecosystems. The main results of the empirical research underlined that: (1) objects of collaboration surpassed the detection of societal expectations to focus on sociotechnical imaginaries stimulation and dissemination; and (2) organizational mechanisms of collaboration exceed open innovation logics to focus on the collective building of favorable emergence conditions for new industrial ecosystems

Broken supply chains and local manufacturing innovation:Responses to Covid-19 and their implications for policy

The immense scale of the pandemic healthcare supply crisis across Sub-Saharan Africa showed that a stronger industrial base allowed India, and some African countries, to better tackle crucial supply gaps. Governments have been forced by Covid-19 into developing new “socio-technical imaginaries”: shared visions of what is possible and important for local health security. The pandemic confirmed widespread pre-pandemic African predictions that in a major crisis, African countries would find themselves at the back of the queue; that truth is driving a new recognition of industrialisation’s role in building local health security, including the huge challenge of cancer care in Africa.</p

A typology for describing and assessing Visual Management in construction projects

Visual Management (VM) is a strategy for making information clear and accessible, strongly related to the lean production principle of increasing process transparency. VM also presents a very important role in promoting effective communication and seamless collaboration among team members. It is not an end but consists of practices that improve production system performance. VM practices include both VM devices (the observable portion of a managerial system) and the non-visual work involved in producing information. VM system is a set of interconnected practices deliberately designed to facilitate information sharing. This set of practices must be complementary and have common purposes, which increases the impact of VM, in comparison to isolated VM practices. Therefore, VM seems to be particularly useful for supporting the management of construction projects that can be considered a complex sociotechnical system, in which many dynamically interacting elements combined with their wide diversity may cause unanticipated variability and asset resilience. Several studies about VM in construction have been developed. However, instead of being based on a sound theoretical basis, VM tends to be implemented in construction projects mostly through efforts made by trial and error, many times only copying applications from other contexts such as manufacturing. Hence, there is a need to broaden the development of theory building related to VM. Moreover, it is also important to find innovative ways of disseminating related concepts by active methodologies, such as serious games. The aim of this thesis is to propose a typology for describing and assessing VM in construction projects. Design Science Research is the methodological approach adopted in this investigation, which is based on three academic papers. The first paper develops the first version of the typology, extending the contribution of taxonomies previously proposed in the literature, by emphasizing the role of collaboration and communication, as well as the need to integrate VM practices into managerial routines and other practices. The second paper is focused on a serious game, named VM Game. It is a tool for learning and discussing a set of VM taxonomies regarding purposes, the role of communication, the role of collaboration, and requirements. The third paper devises some propositions to explain the role and impact of VM systems in construction projects, highlighting their purpose and how they support dealing with complexity. Therefore, the typology could be refined to a final version, with ten types of analysis divided into three main levels, from a lower to a higher level of complexity and context-dependence: VM device, practice, and system. The target audience for using the artifacts devised in this investigation is the academic community interested in advancing the prescriptive knowledge on VM, besides construction companies that use VM as a strategy for information management

Stability and change in large technical systems: the privatisation of Great Britain's railways

Established infrastructure systems, such as telecommunications, energy and transportation, play an important economic and social role in the societies they support. Recent infrastructure privatisations and restructurings provide opportunities for improving our understanding of how change occurs in well-established mature systems. Some outcomes, including accidents and failures, have taken system-builders and policy-makers alike by surprise. This research seeks to improve understanding of infrastructure system change by studying a momentum changing event: the privatisation and restructuring of Great Britain’s railway system. The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) and Large Technical Systems (LTS) theory are used together to examine system development before, during and after restructuring. A novel method is developed using LTS theory to structure data generation from contemporarily written archive sources. Two empirical studies are conducted. The first study analyses the gradual development of this mature system; it highlights the importance of the installed system in development and identifies several system-builders. The second study considers changes in system development that occurred across system privatisation and restructuring; it finds that changes emerged in actors and in activity within the socio-technical regime and it highlights some critical changes linked to later system failure. This work provides three contributions to existing research. (1)The method developed provides a systematic approach to studying established LTS across the broad scope and long periods necessary to capture change; it has the potential to be applied in other studies and could facilitate cross-sector and cross-study comparisons. (2)An extension of LTS theory is proposed that improves its application to the cases of established infrastructure systems and can enhance understanding of the way they change. (3)In considering potential system transformation of the system privatisation, the use of LTS and MLP framework is advocated. LTS theory is used to operationalise the socio-technical regime concept to address some of the limitations of the MLP framework.Open Acces