This summary can be used as preparation for the final exam of the course: "Business and Sustainability Challenges" in the Sustainable Business and Innovation Master's at Utrecht University. It contains summaries of the literature used in the course during . Content page is made explicit in order to...
• Arrow et al. (1995) – Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity and the Environment
• Hopwood et al. (2005) – Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches
• O’Neill et al. (2018) – A good life for all within planetary boundaries
• Carbone et al. (2012) – Mapping Corporate Responsibility and Sustainable Supply Chains: an
Exploratory Perspective
• Qorri et al. (2018) – A conceptual framework for measuring sustainability performance of supply
chains
• Carter and Rogers (2007) – A framework of sustainable supply chain management: moving
toward new theory
• Geissdoerfer et al. (2017) – The Circular Economy – A new sustainability paradigm?
• Murray et al. (2017) – The Circular Economy: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Concept
and Application in a Global Context
• Teece (2010) – Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation
• Zott et al. (2011) – The Business Model: Recent Developments and Future Research
• Wirtz (2016) – Business Models: Origin, Development and Future Research Perspectives
• Chesbrough (2010) – Business Model Innovation: Opportunities and Barriers
• Evans et al. (2017) – Business Model Innovation for Sustainability: Towards a Unified
Perspective for Creation of Sustainable Business Models
• Foss and Saebi (2016) - Fifteen Years of Research on Business Model Innovation: How Far Have
We Come, and Where Should We Go?
• Rogers (1995) - Diffusion of Innovations
• Christensen (1997) – The Innovators Dilemma
• Unruh (2000) – Understanding carbon lock-in
• Kemp (1994) – Technology and the Transition to Environmental Sustainability
• Penna and Geels (2015) – Climate Change and the slow reorientation of the American car
industry: an application and extension of the DILC model
• Geels (2002) – Technological Transitions as Evolutionary Reconfiguration Processes: a multi-
level perspective and a case-study
• Hekkert et al. (2007) - Functions of Innovation Systems: a new approach for analyzing
technological change
• Schot and Geels (2008) - Strategic Niche Management and Sustainable Innovation Journeys:
theory, findings, research agendy and policy
,Part 1: Sustainability Challenges
Lecture 1: Introduction to the course and on sustainability concepts
Concepts
Brundtland Report’s definition of Sustainable Development: “meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” Problems with this definition:
1) It leaves ambiguity, as it leaves for example room for both economic growth, protecting the
environment and meeting the needs of the poor. As such, companies have used the term to justify
continuation of their present course.
2) It is difficult for organizations to apply as it provides little guidance regarding how organizations
might 1) identify future and present needs, 2) determine technologies and resources required to
meet those needs and 3) how to balance organizational responsibilities to multiple stakeholders.
Weak vs Strong Sustainability
Weak sustainability sees natural and manufactured capital as interchangeable with technology able to fill
human produced gaps in the natural world.
Strong sustainability sees that human-made capital, such as technology, cannot replace critical
environmental processes that are vital human existence, for example, the ozone layer, photosynthesis or
the water cycle.
Triple Bottom Line and Sustainability: TBL suggested the inclusion of economic sustainability to the
definition. Whereas sustainability previously only focused on environmental and social elements.
Provisioning systems
Provisioning systems mediate the relationship between biophysical resource use and social outcomes. For
example, different forms of transportation infrastructure (a physical provisioning system, different forms
such as railway versus highways) can generate similar social outcomes at very different levels of resource
use.
Uncertainty in sustainability: a lot of uncertainty about what is going to happen, what does 2-degree
increase in temperature going to do? This is a challenge. (forecasting problem)
Bounded Rationality (transaction costs literature): Rationality is bounded because there are limits to our
thinking capacity, available information, and time.
Inverted U Shape (Environmental Kuznets Curve)
, Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM):
Literature
1.1 Sustainability Concepts
1.1.1 Arrow et al. (1995) – Economic Growth, Carrying Capacity and the Environment
This article discusses 1) the relation between economic growth and environmental quality and 2) the link
between economic activity and the carrying capacity and resilience of the environment.
Inverted-U shape (or Environmental Kuznets Curve): first income goes up to attain a certain standard of
living with corresponding material well-being after which attention is more paid to environmental
amenities.
This inverted-U shape is incorrect because:
1) It is valid for pollutants causing local short term costs, not for pollutants that cause long-term and
dispersed costs
2) It focuses on emissions of pollutants and does not account for resource stock that effect resource
stock, eg. feedback effects of forests and soil.
3) It does not account for system-wide consequences. Eg. reduction in one place may involve
increase in another.
4) Similarly, reductions are mostly due to local institutional reforms that do not account for
international and intergenerational consequences (see 3).
Economic activity is depended upon an environmental resource base, which is limited. This hints that
there is a limit to the carrying capacity of the world. Arrow et al. propose an index of ecosystem resilience,
the amount of disturbances that can be absorbed before a system centered on one equilibrium flips to
another, for environmental stability and argues that human activities and policies should be designed to
protest this resilience of ecosystems.
1.1.2 Hopwood et al. (2005) – Sustainable Development: Mapping Different Approaches
This paper presents a classification and mapping of different trends of thought on sustainable
development, their political and policy frameworks and their attitudes towards change and means of
change.
Brundtland Report’s definition of Sustainable Development: “meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
Weak and strong sustainability
(see concepts)
Maps three trends within the SD debate
1) Status Quo (weak sustainability)
a. Have faith in markets and technology for sustainability
2) Reform
a. Focuses on regulations and laws. A bit of weak and strong sustainability
3) Transformation
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