sustainable innovation business models and economic performance an overview sustainable development requires radical and systemic innovations such innovations can be more effectively created and studied when building on the concept of business models this concept provides firms with a holistic framework to envision and implement sustainable innovations for researchers the concept provides an analytical tool that allows them to assess the interplay between the different aspects that firms combine to create ecological economic and social value in addition the business model concept provides a link between the individual firm and the larger production and consumption system in which it operates this paper provides an introduction to the special issue which emerged from selected papers presented at the erscp emsu 2010 conference held in delft the netherlands papers in the special issue cover a broad range from a conceptual discussion resulting in a research agenda the assessment of diffusion of specific business models such as product service systems the introduction of new management tools for business transition management to case studies on how specific business models evolved in specific communities together these papers provide insight into the promise of the business model concept for understanding and advancing sustainable innovation

why democracies produce efficient results by applying the standard tools of microeconomic analysis i argue that democratic markets work as well as economic markets in particular i show that previous work has greatly exaggerated the existence of principal agent and informational problems in electoral markets and has drawn incorrect conclusions

sustainable supply chain management in emerging economies environmental turbulence institutional voids and sustainability trajectories abstract although research on supply chain management has made many valuable contributions there is a dearth of empirical evidence and theoretical reflection on the characteristics of supply chains that operate mainly in developing and emerging economies the aim of this paper is to help to fill this gap by exploring how supply chain sustainability can be implemented and managed in these settings an in depth case study of the upstream oil and gas industry supply chain in brazil was used to develop propositions about supply chains that operate in developing settings drawing from institutional theory evolutionary theory complexity theory and from the organizational learning innovation and strategy literatures this paper offers four key findings and contributions to the supply chain literature first it shows that becoming a sustainable supply chain is not a destination but a journey where trajectory and time matter given the evolutionary nature of supply chain sustainability trajectories this paper highlights that supply chains learn and evolve just as organizations do second this research indicates that although globalization is a trend natural resource based supply chains are often more geographically bounded and susceptible to local social demands than other supply chains third this paper extends the supply chain literature by arguing that supply chains face additional barriers to sustainability in developing and emerging economies which contribute to a higher degree of complexity and uncertainty due to the existence of highly turbulent business environments and institutional voids these factors in turn hinder supply chain learning and innovation and reduce the slope of supply chains sustainability trajectories finally this research contributes to the literature by claiming that due to the highly complex and uncertain business environments in these settings focal companies play an even more important role in managing the escalating ambiguity stimulating supply chain learning and promoting innovation towards supply chains enhanced sustainability performance

stealth seeds bioproperty biosafety biopolitics transgenic seeds in both india bt cotton and brazil glyphosate resistant soybeans spread widely and rapidly through farming communities outside the reach of biosafety or bioproperty institutions stealth transgenics are saved cross bred repackaged sold exchanged and planted in an anarchic agrarian capitalism that defies surveillance and control of firms and states the outcome is more pro poor than alternative modes of diffusion but undermines a growing consensus in the international development community on appropriate bio safety and intellectual property institutions for biotechnology second stealth procurement of biotechnology divides nominally pro poor political coalitions driven by a great ideational divide on uncertainties and risks of transgenics the ability of seeds to move underground through stealth strategies of farmers undermines widely assumed bio safety regime capability likewise property in biotechnology appears less monopolistic and powerful more relational and contingent stealth practices of farmers in pursuit of transgenics contrary to wishes of firms states and many ngos suggest a different model of the farmer than that often encountered in both developmentalist and anti gmo discourse more active creative and autonomous less hapless and supine resultant incapacity of social institutions to secure interests of firms and states in biotechnology renders more likely eventual development of controls from genetic engineering the terminator technology of political dramaturgy

why did the elites extend the suffrage democracy and the scope of government with an application to britain s age of reform a new rationale is presented for why an elite may want to expand the franchise even in the absence of threats to the established order expanding the franchise can turn politicians away from particularistic politics based on ad personam redistribution within the elite and foster competition based on programs with diffuse benefits if these programs are valuable a majority of the elite votes in favor of an extension of the franchise despite the absence of a threat from the disenfranchised we argue that the evolution of public spending and of political competition in nineteenth century britain is consistent with our model i introduction at the beginning of the nineteenth century in most countries narrow elites had a disproportionate influence on public affairs even in england where parliament was an influential institution suffrage was mostly the privilege of the wealthy and some members of parliament were elected in boroughs with as few as 100 voters while cities such as manchester did not have any representative a century later most western countries had universal male suffrage with female suffrage to arrive shortly thereafter what brought about this democratic revolution in many cases the elites were forced out of power after violent revolutions however there are important examples such as england where democratization took the form of gradual extensions of the suffrage and these were accompanied by little overt violence it is the peculiar pride of england that the record of social and political reform is to be found on the statute book not in the annals of revolution cheyney 1931 p vii such peaceful democratizations are difficult to rationalize within the benchmark political economic models in those models extending the franchise dilutes the elite s power to influence policy and results

upstream innovation and product variety in the u s home pc market this article investigates the welfare implications of the rapid innovation in central processing units cpus and asks whether it results in inefficient elimination of basic personal computer pc products i analyse a game in which firms make multiple discrete product choices and tackle challenges such as partial identification and sample selection estimation results demonstrate that the demand for pcs is highly segmented and that fixed costs consume a substantial portion of the per unit producer profit the estimated model implies that intel s introduction of its pentium m chip contributed significantly to the growth of the mobile pc segment and to consumer welfare the lion s share of the benefits to consumers was enjoyed by the 20 least price sensitive consumers i also find that the pentium m crowded out the pentium iii and pentium 4 technologies and that the benefits to consumers from keeping those older products on the shelf would have been comparable to the added fixed costs while total welfare cannot be increased by keeping older technologies on the shelf such a policy would have allowed the benefits from innovation to trickle down to price sensitive households improving their access to mobile computing

toward a new conception of the environment competitiveness relationship accepting a fixed trade off between environmental regulation and competitiveness unnecessarily raises costs and slows down environmental progress studies finding high environmental compliance costs have traditionally focused on static cost impacts ignoring any offsetting productivity benefits from innovation they typically overestimated compliance costs neglected innovation offsets and disregarded the affected industry s initial competitiveness rather than simply adding to cost properly crafted environmental standards can trigger innovation offsets allowing companies to improve their resource productivity shifting the debate from pollution control to pollution prevention was a step forward it is now necessary to make the next step and focus on resource productivity

the paradox of sustainable innovation the eroom effect moore s law backwards innovation has been widely acknowledged as a key mechanism for addressing sustainable development concerns however less attention has focused on downstream commercialization challenges such as achieving increasingly complex and stringent regulatory approval such challenges may hinder the development of more sustainable technologies especially those coming from smaller or publically funded institutes as well they may obstruct the development of applications that could provide societal benefits but may only have limited commercial viability due to small market niches or applicability to customers with limited financial means we explore this apparent paradox using the concept of the eroom effect moore s law backwards i e where improved price performance due to technological advances are outweighed by increasing costs of regulatory approval and other commercialization costs we illustrate this phenomenon with two cases of publically funded institutes one developing transgenic cotton and the other lignin transformation technology that can replace petroleum based feedstocks in a number of industrial applications we discuss the unintended consequences of the eroom effect and conclude with implications for industry policy and ngos

evaluating the effect of tax deductions on training dutch employers can claim an extra tax deduction when they train employees older than age 40 this discontinuity in a firm s training cost is exploited to identify the tax deduction s effects on training participation and of training participation on wages the results show that the training rate of workers just above age 40 is 15 20 higher than that of workers just below age 40 this difference mainly results from the postponement of training and is not a stimulating effect of the measure the two stage least squares estimate of the wage effect of training is not statistically different from zero

collective action in diverse sierra leone communities scholars have identified ethnic divisions as a leading cause of underdevelopment due partially to their adverse effects on public goods we investigate this issue in post war sierra leone one of the world s poorest and most ethnically diverse countries to address concerns over endogenous local ethnic composition we use an instrumental variables strategy using earlier census data on ethnicity and include several historical and geographic covariates perhaps surprisingly we find that local diversity is not associated with worse public goods provision across multiple outcomes and specifications with precisely estimated zeros we investigate the role of historical factors in generating the findings

the profits of power land rights and agricultural investment in ghana we examine the impact of ambiguous and contested land rights on investment and productivity in agriculture in akwapim ghana we show that individuals who hold powerful positions in a local political hierarchy have more secure tenure rights and that as a consequence they invest more in land fertility and have substantially higher output the intensity of investments on different plots cultivated by a given individual corresponds to that individual s security of tenure over those specific plots and in turn to the individual s position in the political hierarchy relevant to those specific plots

political competition policy and growth theory and evidence from the us this paper develops a simple model to analyse how a lack of political competition may lead to policies that hinder economic growth we test the predictions of the model on panel data for the us states in these data we find robust evidence that lack of political competition in a state is associated with anti growth policies higher taxes lower capital spending and a reduced likelihood of using right to work laws we also document a strong link between low political competition and low income growth

social exclusion and transgenic technology the case of brazilian agriculture many argue that transgenic technology will have wide ranging implications for farmers in developing nations a key concern is that competencies may be destroyed by predominantly foreign multinational transgenic technologies exacerbating problems of social exclusion in the case of subsistence farmers conversely those that fail to adopt the technology may become uncompetitive particularly in commodity based export markets drawing on interview data conducted in brazil and supporting data collected in north america europe and china we found that the impact of transgenic technology varies it has less impact on farmers that adapt the products to their crop systems and environment and greater negative implications for less formally educated subsistence farmers in consequence of both complexity and compatibility earlier attempts at industrializing agriculture through technological innovation led to vastly improved agricultural output and exports but the benefits of productivity was not equitably distributed d lee 2005 american journal of agricultural economics 87 5 1325 1334 nor was it designed to meet specific local environmental and socioeconomic farmer conditions exacerbating social exclusion multinationals attempting to introduce transgenic technology without considering the broader social and ethical implications will invite resistance we discuss the implications for policy makers multinationals and small scale farmers

a hard nut to crack implementing supply chain sustainability in an emerging economy abstract in the last decade sustainable supply chain management has become a key topic in the sustainability literature as well as a buzzword in industry and policy circles although research has made substantial contributions there is a lack of understanding on how focal companies operating in emerging economies can lead the implementation of sustainability into their supply chains this research connects and advances the constructs of cleaner production sustainability and supply chains by exploring a classic case of a focal company operating in an emerging economy that even facing considerable challenges has been able to succeed in transforming its entire supply chain drawing from stakeholder theory and contingency theory this research offers four key contributions to the sustainability and supply chain discourses as follows 1 it proposes an innovation centered approach to sustainable supply chain management by adapting and extending the tcos uncertainty framework 2 it suggests that the way a focal company manages and is influenced by its established network of relationships shape the evolution of the supply chain sustainability trajectories 3 it argues that supply chains are dynamic entities and should then be considered and understood through the lenses of evolutionary approaches and 4 it suggests that the implementation and management of sustainable supply chains are context specific challenges and therefore theoretical managerial and policy generalizations are difficult to be achieved

anarchy self governance and legal titling scholars and policymakers prescribe legal titling to improve prospects for economic development and political order however a public choice literature exists that has long recognized that self governance often works well and that the state may not be able to improve upon local economic institutions at reasonable cost although the implication that legal titling should proceed with caution is seemingly straightforward the literature on legal titling does not take anarchy seriously as a policy option in addition there is a public choice literature that presumes the state is the most important source of property rights this essay fills this gap in the property rights literature by applying the concept of efficient anarchy to legal titling in afghanistan original fieldwork evidence from rural afghanistan suggests that anarchy of land governance is a better option than legal titling the essay concludes by opening up the black box of state building by explaining why it often makes sense to sequence improvements in political capacity and political constraints prior to investing in legal titling

firm technological trajectory as a driver of eco innovation in young small and medium sized enterprises abstract few studies have focused on green innovation in young small and medium sized enterprises instead research tends to focus on large companies with formal research and development departments studying the influence of the firm s current technological strategy as well as the regulatory framework as a key driver of eco innovation this paper proposes that the combination of a firm s technological trajectory and its current research and development strategy are key determinants of eco innovation the authors investigate these relationships with panel data on 212 young firms in spain analysing their innovation strategy and behaviour during their first 10 years of activity the results show that the firms cluster into four technological trajectories but only market oriented innovators engage significantly more in eco innovation these firms are characterized by a high use of formal appropriability mechanisms market opportunity recognition arising from cooperation and high knowledge cumulativeness this paper sheds light on whether and the extent to which a firm s technological trajectory is a driver of eco innovation it confirms that firms that search for opportunities and have a continuous collaboration with market players are more prone to develop eco innovations additionally it shows that path dependence occurs in the development of eco innovations in that a highly developed innovation capacity leads to additional green innovation in the future the findings indicate that young small firms need to develop innovation capabilities that also enable them to adopt advanced technology before striving to become greener the paper concludes that policies designed to stimulate cooperative networking with other market players an upgrading of technological capabilities and the adoption of new technologies are all desirable because they contribute to improving the environmental impact of firms innovations

relationships between eco innovation and financial performance evidence from publicly traded companies in poland and hungary while the analysis of the linkages between eco innovative activities and financial performance is a popular topic in the existing body of literature many questions about these relationships especially in transition economies in central and eastern europe cee remain unanswered in this paper we explore four types of eco innovation product process market and sources of supply and their impact on accounting based measurers of financial performance using the data on polish and hungarian publicly traded companies from the years 2006 2013 our results indicated that eco innovators were generally characterized by higher returns on assets and equity and lower earnings retention additionally companies that introduce eco innovation were also significantly larger more likely to face lower financial risk exposure and more likely to possess greater free cash flow than conventional firms the findings suggest that strong asset and financial capabilities are relevant pre conditions for the development of eco innovativeness and that there is a need for environmental policy to create clear incentives for smes to increase activities in that area overall this study extends the understanding of financial performance implications of innovation by focussing on the area of environmental innovation

an approach to business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development successful business is increasingly about understanding the challenges and opportunities linked to society s transition towards sustainability and e g being able to innovate design and build business models that are functional in this context however current business model innovation and design generally fails to sufficiently embrace the sustainability dimension typically the business case of sustainability is not understood profoundly enough the planning horizon and system scope are insufficient the competence to bring together people into systematic ventures towards sustainable business is too low a unifying framework for sustainability analyses planning cross disciplinary and cross sector cooperation and cohesive use of the myriad sustainability tools methods and concepts has been developed the framework for strategic sustainable development fssd similarly a generic approach to business model design has been put forward the business model canvas bmc in this paper we explore how the fssd could inform business model innovation and design by combining it with the bmc and supplementary tools methods and concepts such as creativity techniques value network mapping life cycle assessment and product service systems the results show that the fssd bmc combination can support business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development as well as strengthen each supplementary tool method and concept in its own primary purpose we apply the combined approach for the purpose of initial testing and presentation to a real case of business model evolution based on our findings we propose a new approach to business model innovation and design for strategic sustainable development the new approach facilitates e g business scalability and risk avoidance and clarifies the interplay between classical business model development and strategic sustainability thinking the new approach highlights the opportunity for novel business model design for future sustainable success

electoral bias and policy choice theory and evidence this paper develops an approach to studying how bias in favor of one party due to the pattern of electoral districting affects policy choice we tie a commonly used measure of electoral bias to the theory of party competition and show how this affects party strategy in theory the usefulness of the approach is illustrated using data on local government in england the results suggest that reducing electoral bias leads parties to moderate their policies

are cleaner production innovations the solution for small mining operations in poor regions the case of padua in brazil abstract mining in santo antonio de padua a city located in the underdeveloped northeast area of the rio de janeiro state in brazil is currently the most important economic activity in the region unfortunately companies lag behind technologically and use rudimentary production methods which cause serious environmental problems social implications and poor competitiveness in order to seek sustainable solutions for the padua mining region local support organizations have created initiatives to develop endogenous cleaner production innovations to enhance the industry s sustainability performance during this process some barriers for mining companies to adopt these developed technologies have emerged this research draws on the cleaner production sustainability and innovation literature and uses a qualitative research with multiple sources of evidence to understand the dynamics behind the padua mining region more specifically this research explores how initiatives to improve the sustainability performance led by local support organizations took place analyzes their outcomes i e cleaner production innovations and identifies some of the barriers to technology adoption this paper offers three key research contributions first we claim that cleaner production approaches alone cannot create sustainable mining regions in emerging and developing countries but they are definitively a step in the right direction since they provide the base for expanding the scope towards sustainability second we argue that technology cannot be understood as the panacea for sustainability because it will never represent the complete solution for companies sustainability problems third we claim that companies can face a managerial trap if they pursue enhanced sustainability performance solely through the adoption of cleaner production innovations

can development aid contribute to social cohesion after civil war evidence from a field experiment in post conflict liberia civil war is very common in the develop ing world with harmful welfare effects when it occurs many fear that the devastation wrought by violent conflict destroys social capital impedes economic development and leads to the recur rence of violence paul collier et al 2003 in response donors are injecting large amounts of aid into post conflict countries a significant share of this assistance is spent on community driven reconstruction cdr programs which support the establishment of new local institu tions in order to promote social reconciliation whether this assistance has this effect is how ever largely unknown can brief foreign funded efforts to build local institutions in fact have posi tive effects on local patterns of cooperation we address this question using a randomized field experiment to evaluate the impact of a cdr project in northern liberia the project was funded by the united kingdom s department for international development dfid and imple mented by the international rescue committee irc the project attempted to build demo cratic community level institutions for making and implementing decisions about local public goods this model of support for participatory processes to enhance local public goods provi

sustainable development and entrepreneurship past contributions and future directions this article discusses the emerging research concerned with sustainable development and entrepreneurship which is the focus of this special issue of the journal of business venturing entrepreneurship has been recognized as a major conduit for sustainable products and processes and new ventures are being held up as a panacea for many social and environmental concerns however there remains considerable uncertainty regarding the nature of entrepreneurship s role and how it may unfold we begin with an overview of sustainable development and the role of entrepreneurship and outline recent contributions exploring this role we then summarize the papers presented in this special issue and conclude with suggestions for further research

chiefs economic development and elite control of civil society in sierra leone we study the effect of constraints on chiefs power on economic outcomes citizens attitudes and social capital a paramount chief in sierra leone must come from a ruling family originally recognized by british colonial authorities in chiefdoms with fewer ruling families chiefs face less political competition and development outcomes are significantly worse today variation in the security of property rights over land is a potential mechanism paradoxically with fewer ruling families the institutions of chiefs authority are more highly respected and measured social capital is higher we argue that these results reflect the capture of civil society organizations by chiefs

reinventing strategies for emerging markets beyond the transnational model with established markets becoming saturated multinational corporations mncs have turned increasingly to emerging markets ems in the developing world such em strategies have been targeted almost exclusively at the wealthy elite at the top of the economic pyramid recently however a number of mncs have launched new initiatives that explore the untapped market potential at the base of the economic pyramid the largest and fastest growing segment of the world s population reaching the four billion people in these markets poses both tremendous opportunities and unique challenges to mncs as conventional wisdom about mnc global capabilities and subsidiary strategy in ems may not be appropriate how mncs can successfully enter these low income markets has not been effectively addressed in the literatures on global and em strategies an exploratory analysis involving interviews with mnc managers original case studies and archival material indicates that the transnational model of national responsiveness global efficiency and worldwide learning may not be sufficient results suggest that the success of initiatives targeting low income markets is enhanced by recognizing that western style patterns of economic development may not occur in these business environments business strategies that rely on leveraging the strengths of the existing market environment outperform those that focus on overcoming weaknesses these strategies include developing relationships with non traditional partners co inventing custom solutions and building local capacity together these successful strategies suggest the importance of mncs developing a global capability in social embeddedness

green economy and related concepts an overview for the last ten years the notion of a green economy has become increasingly attractive to policy makers however green economy covers a lot of diverse concepts and its links with sustainability are not always clear in this article we focus on definitions of green economy and related concepts and an evaluation of these concepts against the criterion of strong and weak sustainability the article serves three purposes firstly we identify and describe diverse theories concepts approaches and tools related to a green economy among these are the theories of environmental economics and ecological economics the concepts and approaches of cleaner production waste hierarchy bio economy industrial ecology circular economy nature based solutions and dematerialization through product servicizing and tools like life cycle assessment and cost benefit analysis secondly we develop a framework that shows the capacity of the green economy concepts approaches and tools to support the transition towards sustainability such a framework can serve as a heuristic to embed diverse concepts and approaches into a green economy framework thirdly we briefly discuss green economy concepts with respect to their impact on strong and weak sustainability depending on the different concepts approaches and tools identified in the green economy framework different degrees of substitutability and trade offs between environmental and economic benefits are allowed and more or less structural changes of our modes of living are required by discussing the notion of green economy and related concepts approaches and tools we seek to make a contribution to their definitions and relationships as a prerequisite for operationalizing green economy