escaping the green prison entrepreneurship and the creation of opportunities for sustainable development abstract while entrepreneurial activity has been an important force for social and ecological sustainability its efficacy is dependent upon the nature of market incentives this limitation is sometimes explained by the metaphor of the prisoner s dilemma which we term the green prison in this prison entrepreneurs are compelled to environmentally degrading behavior due to the divergence between individual rewards and collective goals for sustainable development entrepreneurs however can escape from the green prison by altering or creating the institutions norms property rights and legislation that establish the incentives of competitive games we provide a variety of evidence of such entrepreneurial action and discuss its implications for theory and practice

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

efficient bilateral taxation of externalities in the context of the example of a factory whose smoke emissions affect a near by laundry coase j law econ 3 1 44 1960 argued for taxing the laundry as well as the factory while baumol am econ rev 62 307 322 1972 argued for taxing only the factory consistent application of marginal cost pricing shows that the efficient tax on laundries is positive when the number of laundries is finite and that the tax approaches zero in the limit as the number of laundries approaches infinity the efficient tax on factories is bounded away from zero regardless of the number of factories our framework is an application of the vickrey clarke groves family of truth telling mechanisms that require each agent to bear the full social cost of changing the outcome that would have prevailed had she not participated in the decision until now the literature has not fully resolved the discrepancies between coase s and baumol s arguments and even contemporary textbooks on environmental economics and public economics do not offer correct and complete analyses

going one s own way drivers in developing business models for sustainability business models have received much attention in recent years due to their importance in the fundamental logic of every company this paper is based on a qualitative empirical research study conducted in cooperation with 10 austrian companies in 2014 it aims to investigate business models for sustainability in order to better understand how they operate and what the drivers for developing these business models are this is a cross industry sample covering companies showing notable sustainability activities in fact half of the companies were founded with the intention of complying with sustainability principles the results show that business models incorporating aspects of sustainability do not differ substantially from traditional business models however they do require specific adaptations and extensions furthermore the findings highlight the significance of company leaders in organizing change processes so as to encompass sustainable business practices the findings reveal that business models undergo constant change and that sustainability plays a central role both internally and externally the results gained allow for a deeper understanding of the motivational aspects and drivers needed in developing business models for sustainability and serve as a solid basis for further research in this field

a framework for strategic sustainable development the purpose of this paper is to give a comprehensive and cohesive description of the most recent version of the framework for strategic sustainable development fssd and also to describe and discuss the overall method for developing the fssd elaborate on the general rational for and general benefits of a framework of this type and validate benefits of the fssd through examples of its application the purpose is also to point to pertinent future work in preparation of this paper we have reviewed previous publications and other documents related to the fssd and reflected on the 25 year learning process between scientists and practitioners we conclude that the fssd has proven to aid organizations in thoroughly understanding and putting themselves in context of the global sustainability challenge and to move themselves strategically towards sustainability i e to stepwise reduce their negative impacts on ecological and social systems at large while strengthening the own organization through capturing of innovation opportunities including new business models exploration of new markets and winning of new market shares and through reduced risks and operation costs specifically we conclude that the fssd aids more effective management of system boundaries and trade offs makes it possible to model and assess sustainable potentials for various materials and practices before investments are made and offers the possibility for more effective collaboration across disciplines and sectors regions value chains and stakeholder groups we also conclude that the fssd makes it possible to prevent damages even from yet unknown problems and not the least to guide selection development and combination of supplementary methods tools and other forms of support which makes it possible to increase their utility for strategic sustainable development finally we have shown that the fssd is useful for structuring transdisciplinary academic education and research several examples of ongoing fssd related research as well as ideas for future work are given

the substitutability of nuclear capital for thermal capital and the shadow price in the korean electric power industry as part of ongoing efforts to reduce co2 emissions by increasing the proportion of the energy mix relying on nuclear power it may be useful to substitute nuclear power for thermal power wherever possible thereby substantially reducing the need to use fossil fuels in order to evaluate the contribution of nuclear power to potential co2 reduction this study examines the substitutability of thermal capital and nuclear capital in the korean electric power industry by utilizing the input distance function additionally the unit costs of thermal capital and nuclear capital are compared in terms of their shadow prices which are defined as the opportunity costs inherent to one additional unit of capital increase deriving from a reduction in labor the empirical results presented herein indicate that nuclear capital is readily substituted for thermal capital but the substitutability of thermal capital for nuclear capital is relatively low the shadow price ratio of nuclear capital to thermal capital is estimated to be 15 9 on average showing an upward trend over the years from 1982 to 2010

corporate social responsibility theories mapping the territory the corporate social responsibility csr field presents not only a landscape of theories but also a proliferation of approaches which are controversial complex and unclear this article tries to clarify the sit uation mapping the territory by classifying the main csr theories and related approaches in four groups 1 instrumental theories in which the corporation is seen as only an instrument for wealth creation and its social activities are only a means to achieve economic results 2 political theories which concern themselves with the power of corporations in society and a responsible use of this power in the political arena 3 integrative theories in which the corporation is focused on the satisfaction of social demands and 4 ethical theories based on ethical responsibilities of corporations to society in practice each csr theory presents four dimensions related to profits political performance social demands and ethical values the findings suggest the necessity to develop a new theory on the business and society relationship which should integrate these four dimensions

a sealed bid auction mechanism for siting noxious facilities this paper proposes a sealed bid mechanism for facilitating the siting process of noxious facilities such as prisons trash disposal plants and incinerators for hazardous waste these facilities have created such opposition by communities that the acronyms nimby not in my backyard or lulu local undesirable land use are now in common usage to describe the public s reaction to them the noxious facility siting problem arises because there are economies of scale associated with having only one plant to serve the needs of a wide region the community that hosts the plant absorbs all of the environmental costs while the rest of the region enjoys the benefits of the facility one reason that these facilities have been so strongly opposed by communities is that they generate relatively little new employment and provide limited additional taxes in relation to their perceived negative impact d morell and c magorian 1982 some compensation arrangement is thus needed to share the gains from the winners to the potential loser this paper discusses a sealed bid auction mechanism for selecting a location for the facility so that all communities feel they are better off than under the status quo

asymmetries in the valuation of risk and the siting of hazardous waste disposal facilities recently several economists richard thaler 1980 jack knetsch and j a sinden 1984 following suggestions of psychologists daniel kahneman and amos tversky 1979 have argued that current economic models of consumer behavior fail to explain observed asymmetries in how individuals respond to gain vs losses in perceived entitlements attention to their arguments is increasing because they relate to many current policy issues especially those associated with undesirable land uses most of the papers suggesting this limitation with the conventional economic framework have been motivated by the large differences between the estimates of willingness to pay vs willingness to accept as measures of the change in individual well being that would result from a change in the conditions of access to or the quality of a commodity in this paper we report the first evidence of a sizable property rights effect using only willingness to pay measures this change is potentially important because both the recent appraisal of contingent valuation surveys see ronald cummings et al 1986 an important source of the available empirical evidence and laboratory experiments suggest that individuals may have difficulty in dealing with the concept of compensation this is especially true when there is no opportunity for individuals to learn about transactions that involve compensation through experience based on a contingent valuation survey of households in suburban boston we found that respondents bid significantly more to reduce risk than they indicated they were willing to pay to avoid an equivalent risk increase while our findings support suggestions that changes in the implied entitlements to safety can lead to large differences in welfare measures for risk changes several of these earlier arguments would have implied that individuals were willing to pay more to avoid a risk increase the opposite to our results thus these differences imply that the determinants of individuals valuations for risk changes are more complex than past studies have acknowledged

sustainable entrepreneurship is entrepreneurial will enough a north south comparison based on an analysis of 44 cases in canada tunisia and cameroon this research attempts to determine the fundaments of sustainable entrepreneurship se in an international perspective and to shed the light on the potential impact of economic institutional and cultural dimensions upon diverse levels of sustainability in small and medium size firms smes neo institutional and entrepreneurship theories were combined in an integrative conceptual model to fully embrace the meanings and practices of se and to question the culture free argument of some prescriptions as well as some international programs the analysis of the rationale behind entrepreneurs committed to sustainability in the three countries compared to less engaged firms shows that entrepreneurs individual values are crucial in all cases socio cultural specificities and institutional realities can however be more or less inductive to the adoption of sustainable practices in smes this study also demonstrates that external stimuli are needed in tunisia and cameroon to reach the same environmental involvement as found in canada moreover support programs to assist smes with the adoption of sustainable practices and communication about the issue have to be tailored to the entrepreneur s motives the firms levels of openness to sustainability the socio cultural practices already embedded and the countries priorities implications for policy management and research are also discussed

entry and exit patterns of toxic firms we pair an establishment level dataset from texas with public information available in the toxics release inventory tri to evaluate the standing of dirty industries in texas census tracts with a focus on environmental justice concerns the share of nonwhite residents in a tract is positively correlated with the number of tri reporting firms and an inverse u shaped relationship characterizes the number of tri reporting firms and a tract s median income even after controlling for factor prices and other covariates which might drive firm location decisions entrants that report to the tri are more likely to locate in areas with a higher share of nonwhite residents firms that report to the tri are also more likely to enter areas with a low share college graduates in contrast the number of entrants from industries which do not have tri reporters is negatively related to the percent of nonwhite residents in a tract firms in these non reporting industries are also more likely to enter areas with a high share of college graduates polluters appear to agglomerate raising concerns about both chemical releases being concentrated in certain tracts and also affecting nonwhite dense areas disproportionately the strength of these effects often depend on an urban rural classification with rural areas experiencing the most pronounced concerns moreover tri reporting firms are less likely to exit the market relative to their peers which operate in the same industry but do not need to file tri reports suggesting releases may affect a region in the long run

choosing a common project experimental evidence on the multibidding mechanism abstract perez castrillo d wettstein d 2002 choosing wisely a multibidding approach american economic review 5 1577 1587 and veszteg r f 2004 multibidding game under uncertainty working paper 14 04 universidad de navarra propose the use of a multibidding mechanism for situations where agents have to choose a common project examples are decisions involving public goods or public bads we report experimental results that test the practical tractability and effectiveness of multibidding mechanisms in environments where agents hold private information concerning their valuation of the projects the mechanism performed quite well in the laboratory providing the ex post efficient outcome in roughly three quarters of the cases across the treatments moreover the largest part of the subject pool formed their bids according to theoretical bidding behavior

the role of co opetition in low carbon manufacturing abstract low carbon manufacturing has become a strategic objective for many developed and developing economies this study examines the role of co opetition in achieving this objective we investigate the pricing and emissions reduction policies for two rival manufacturers with different emission reduction efficiencies under the cap and trade policy we assume that the product demand is price and emission sensitive based on non cooperative and cooperative games the optimal solutions for the two manufacturers are derived in the purely competitive and co opetitive market environments respectively through the discussion and numerical analysis we uncovered that in both pure competition and co opetition models the two manufacturers optimal prices depend on the unit price of carbon emission trading in addition higher emission reduction efficiency leads to lower optimal unit carbon emissions and higher profit in both the pure competition and co petition models interestingly compared to pure competition co opetition will lead to more profit and less total carbon emissions however the improvement in economic and environmental performance is based on higher product prices and unit carbon emissions

the siting of hazardous waste facilities in federal systems the political economy of nimby this paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system we first show that a decentralized systemyields the first best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions in our model each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions this leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large and in thegovernment s weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities the centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level since compensation has proved difficult a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system

transforming sustainability challenges into competitive advantage multiple case studies kaleidoscope converging into sustainable business models abstract recent tendency has been pushing organizations to rethink their role in society and making organization reflect that profit may not be the only and foremost important business performance criteria thus recent literature has been exploring the sustainable business models sbm s as a way to insert sustainability goals into the core of business decisions this research aims to advance in this body of knowledge and proposes a theory and practice based framework to support organizations towards more sbm making explicit main elements to align business to sustainability performance goals to support the argument that there is no unique solution to design sbm this research performs a multiple case studies in eleven organizations from diverse sectors situated in brazil and in the united kingdom results show that sbm is not an attempt to deny business as usual perspective but rather it seeks to complement this view by adding a more axiological and systemic approach in particular three convergent aspects were identified in the case studies as relevant efforts support the integration of sustainability into sbm s value creation and delivery system 1 the connection between business purpose and employees values and believes 2 the pro active and clear engagement in solving sustainability problems and 3 the need for system level changes to enable successful sbm s this systemic thinking is highlighted by the concept emerged from the research the cascaded sustainable value captured representing that as sbm s are part of a value network value delivered by the organizations is captured not only by stakeholders to which they have direct contact but rather this is also deployed to stakeholders of focal company s stakeholders this distinction is not always trivial for companies so the proposed concept can support advances in sbm discussions further studies are called to the challenge of making explicit that sbm s are not only companies that directly addresses a specific social and or environmental problem but rather is an emerging paradigm on how to manage efficient businesses in any sector to add positive value to the globe

the sustainable value approach a clarifying and constructive comment recently the original benchmarking methodology of the sustainable value approach became subjected to serious debate while kuosmanen and kuosmanen 2009b critically question its validity introducing productive efficiency theory figge and hahn 2009 put forward that the implementation of productive efficiency theory severely conflicts with the original financial economics perspective of the sustainable value approach we argue that the debate is very confusing because the original sustainable value approach presents two largely incompatible objectives nevertheless we maintain that both ways of benchmarking could provide useful and moreover complementary insights if one intends to present the overall resource efficiency of the firm from the investor s viewpoint we recommend the original benchmarking methodology if one on the other hand aspires to create a prescriptive tool setting up some sort of reallocation scheme we advocate implementation of the productive efficiency theory although the discussion on benchmark application is certainly substantial we should avoid the debate to become accordingly narrowed next to the benchmark concern we see several other challenges considering the development of the sustainable value approach 1 a more systematic resource selection 2 the inclusion of the value chain and 3 additional analyses related to policy in order to increase interpretative power

tragic choices and collective decision making an empirical study of voter preferences for alternative collective decision making mechanisms central to this paper has been the idea that there might be a demand on the part of the citizens for having specific decision mechanisms in specific types of situations this demand cannot be deduced on purely theoretical grounds but rather should be registered case by case theory might help in categorising classes of situations where decisions can be tackled with the same approach in any case the choice of a decision mechanism should not be left completely at the discretion of the policy maker if the citizens s welfare is to be promoted in a suitable way

on a political solution to the nimby conflict scale economy in the construction and operation of public facilities such as landfills calls for cooperation among communities to build a common facility arthur o sullivan 1993 such a facility is a mixture of a public good and a private bad and hence leads to strong opposition by communities to locate it in their vicinity bruno s frey et al 1996 this is one of the most serious environmental concerns of recent years and is known as nimby not in my backyard in this paper we study the hypothesis that a democratic political process creates an adequate mechanism for the resolution of the nimby conflict the intuitive explanation is simple a nimby conflict is likely to induce lobbying and symmetric pressures by all threatened communities in the relevant region as is well known gene m grossman and elhanan helpman 1994 when subject to symmetric pressures politicians stick firmly to principles and function most efficiently the existing literature on the siting of noxious facilities focuses mainly on normative issues such as welfare maximizing siting via decentralized community based mechanisms e g howard kunreuther and paul r kleindorfer 1986 robert c mitchell and richard t carson 1986 and deborah minehart and zvika neeman 2002 evidently however such mechanisms have seldom been practiced e g stephen k swallow et al 1992 the current study adopts a positive approach integrating a political economic framework with a model of a competitive real estate market in the theoretical section a government of a linear two city economy determines the location of a noxious facility which affects the equilibrium in the real estate market and induces the spatial distributions of price and population the government is subject to political pressures by city level lobbies of landowners both landlords and home owners in general the political equilibrium and the socially optimal siting differ however the more equitable the distribution of landownership in the region the smaller the difference at the limit when property distribution is perfectly equitable and all cities participate in the political arena the government locates the facility at the socially optimal site the analysis proceeds by identifying additional conditions under which the political equilibrium siting coincides with the socially optimal location and with an empirical analysis in the empirical section the theoretical framework is extended to account for a multiple city region and is calibrated to assess the prospects of the political system for resolving the nimby conflict in the context of landfill siting in israel it is shown that if all cities in the region form political lobbies and the politicians are not extremely corrupt the political siting is close geographically to the socially optimal location and the difference entails a less than 0 1 percent reduction in social welfare moreover even if the formation of lobbying in the region is incomplete as long as the weight the politicians assign to social welfare is larger than 0 7 the proximity of the politically and socially optimal locations is preserved we interpret the above results as supportive of the hypothesis of an effective political solution to the nimby conflict

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

demand pull government policies to support product service system activity the case of energy service companies escos in the uk product service systems psss constitute a family of service based business models designed to satisfy our societal needs in an economically and environmentally sustainable manner to date however pss application has remained niche due to a variety of critical barriers this paper explores how demand pull national government policies could support pss activity by addressing these barriers and cultivating market demand lessons are drawn from a case study of how regulatory economic incentive informative and procurement policies have supported energy service company esco activity in the uk a sub set of the pss family focused on energy service provision subsequently five policy recommendations are presented to support pss activity 1 balancing economic incentives and regulatory disincentives 2 promoting indirect policy support 3 redesigning existing market structures 4 promoting locally led pss activity and 5 creating stable policy frameworks the paper warns however that national government policy cannot easily address all pss barriers such as customer preferences international developments technological progress and inherent business model weaknesses pointing to the need for other complementary solutions furthermore other governance actors beside national government could also implement pss supporting policies

a review of theories of the firm and their contributions to corporate sustainability corporate sustainability has arisen as an alternative to traditional short term profit oriented ap proaches to managing the firm by holistically balancing economic environmental and social issues in the present generation and for future ones although a number of theories of the firm have been pro posed within recent decades their application to corporate sustainability has been limited this paper presents an overview of the most widely used theories of the firm such as the stockholder theory the aggregate theory the contractual theory the resource based view and the stakeholder theory and analyses their contributions to corporate sustainability from an interpretative perspective the discus sion highlights the point that each of the theories on its own is limited in addressing sustainability s four dimensions i e the economic environmental social and time nonetheless each theory or group of theories has a particular perspective or principles that can contribute to one or more of the four dimensions the authors of this paper propose a sustainability oriented theory of the firm which is built upon elements of those theories as they relate to corporate sustainability this new theory can be useful in providing the firm s leaders and all of its stakeholders with a more complete vision of its ob ligations opportunities relations and processes that the firm should address as it engages in helping to make societies become more equitable and sustainable in the short and long terms