Innovation- The Pathway to Threefold Sustainability

The purposes of this chapter is to delve more deeply into the processes and determinants of technological, organisational, and social innovation and to discuss the instruments and policies to stimulate the kinds of innovation necessary for the transformation of industrial societies into sustainable ones. Again, here we emphasise the attainment of ‘triple sustainability’ – improvements in competitiveness/long-term dynamic efficiency, social cohesion, and environment (including both resource productivity and environmental pollution) – which are the cornerstones of the real wealth of people

Justice in the Global Work Life: The Right to Know, to Participate, and to Benefit in Sustainable Industrial Transformations

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Understanding Technological Responses of Industrial Firms to Environmental Problems: Implications for Government Policy (chapter)

Technological change is now generally regarded as essential in achieving the next major advances in pollution reduction. The necessary technologi-cal changes must include: (1) the substitution of materials used as inputs, (2) process redesign, and (3) final product reformulation. Initiatives for focusing on technological change must address multimedia pollution and reflect fundamental shifts in the design of products and processes. Distin-guished from end-of-pipe pollution control, those new initiatives are kluown as pollution prevention, source reduction, taxics use reduction, or clean technology (OECD 1987). The practices of in-process recycling and equip-ment modification are sometimes also included in the approach. The term waste reduction is also used, but it appears to be less precise and may not include air or water emissions. Pollution prevention has also been dis-cussed as a preferred way for achieving sustainable development, giving rise to the term sustainable technology (Heaton et al. 1991). This chapter argues that the key to success in pollution prevention is to influence managerial knowledge of and managerial attitudes toward both technological change and environmental concerns. Encouraging techno-logical changes for production purposes (i.e., main business innovation) and for environmental compliance purposes must be seen as interrelated

Major Challenges To Engineering Education for Sustainable Development: What Has to Change to Make it Creative, Effective, and Acceptable to the Established Disciplines

Scholars and professionals committed to fostering sustainable development have urged a re-examination of the curriculum and the restructuring of research in engineering-focused institutions of higher learning. The focus is on engineering, more than on the natural and physical sciences or on social science, because the activities that drive the industrial state – the activities that implement scientific advance – are generally rooted in engineering. Moreover, engineers are known as ‘problem solvers’ and if economies are becoming unsustainable because of engineering, it is natural to ask whether engineering as an activity and as a profession can be re-directed toward achieving sustainable transformations. Of course, engineering can not do it alone; scientific as well as social and legal changes must occur as well. This paper addresses the challenges ahead, if this optimistic vision is to be more than wishful thinking. Following a treatment of the philosophical and intellectual foundations of technological, organizational, social, and pedagogical innovation necessary for sustainable transformations of existing institutions and mindsets, this paper ends by addressing the following themes and questions: (1) How can multi- and trans-disciplinary research and teaching coexist in a meaningful way in today’s university structures? (2) Does education relevant to sustainable development require its own protected incubating environment to survive, or will it otherwise be gobbled up and marginalized by attempting to instill it throughout the traditional curriculum and traditional disciplines? (3) How can difficulties in linking the needed teaching and research be overcome? (4) Even if there exist technical options to do so, how can it be made safe for courageous students to take educational paths different from traditional tracks? (5) What can we learn from comparative analysis of universities in different nations and environments? and (6) What roles can national and EU governments have in accelerating the needed changes