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Smartphones make intensive use of precious metals and so called conflict minerals in order to reach their high performance in a compact size. In recent times, sustainability challenges related to production, use and disposal of smartphones are increasingly a topic of public debate. Thus, established industry actors and newly emerging firms are driven to engage in more sustainable practices, such as sustainable sourcing of materials, maintenance services or take-back schemes for discarded mobile phones. Many of these latter efforts can be related to the concept of a circular economy (CE). This thesis explores how CE-related value creation architectures (VCAs) in the smartphone industry contribute to slowing and closing resource loops in a CE. In order to analyze these new industry arrangements, transaction cost theory (TCT) is used as a guiding theory for a make-or-buy analysis. Combining TCT with the concept of a CE is a novel research approach that enables the empirical analysis of relationships between focal actors (e.g. manufacturers) and newly emerging loop operators (e.g. recycling firms) in the smartphone industry. Case studies of such VCAs are conducted with case companies drawn from the Innovation Network on Sustainable Smartphones (INaS) at Leuphana Universtity of Lüneburg and analyzed regarding their involved actors, partnerships, circular activities, motivation and perceived barriers. Evidence from the conducted case studies suggests that asset specificity for circular practices increases for higher order CE-loops such as maintenance or reuse, therefore long-term partnerships between focal actors and loop operators or vertical integration of CE practices are beneficial strategies to reach a sophisticated CE. Similarly, circular practices that go beyond recycling require a strong motivation, either through integration in the focal firm´s quality commitment or through business model recognition. It is further suggested that the circular design of products and services could reduce necessary transaction costs and thus overall costs of a circular economy. Four different integration strategies for circular economy practices have been derived from the conducted case studies. These are: 1) vertically integrated loops, 2) cooperative loop-networks, 3) outsourcing to loop operators and 4) independent loop operators. This work thus provides evidence that circular economy activities do not necessarily have to be managed by focal actors in the value chain. Rather, circular practices can also be put forward by specialized loop operators or even independent actors such as repair shops.
The fact that digitalization comes along with a lot of negative effects onto the environment is slightly known in the case of energy consumption by hardware, especially regarding mobile devices, having a limited battery life. However, awareness of environmental issues of software, being the driver of hardware, is mainly missing, even if the research field addressing corresponding issues is growing. Thus, the doctoral thesis at hand addresses the question How to draw (a) developers and (b) usersattention to environmental issues of software? By presenting (a) a calculation method of the carbon footprint of software projects and (b) a concept for an eco-label for software products, evaluated by a user survey, the doctoral thesis provides two strategies how to draw the attention to environmental issues of software. Summarizing, this thesis can act as a basis for further research in bridging from science to society in the context of environmental issues of software. Its findings can be seen as starting points for practical implementations of methods and tools supporting a more environmentally friendly way of developing software and informing about environmental issues of software usage. In order to get the implementation of the research results of the thesis going, it highlights practical implications for diverse groups of stakeholders - researchers, certifiers, public administration and professional purchasers, and environmental associations - that have been identified as being important for the practical implementation of the presented concepts and, thus, represent the target group of the doctoral thesis.
A central aspect of sustainability governance is collaboration, which has been lauded for its benefits but also criticized for its challenges. The potential benefits of collaboration have apparently been recognized also in the context of EU agriculture. Yet, there has been a lack of holistic consideration of how collaboration can be systematically integrated and promoted in the governance of EU agriculture. Sustainable agriculture cannot only be encouraged through changes in the overall governance system but also through the support of existing and emerging small-scale collaborative initiatives for sustainable agriculture. Indeed, there has been substantial research on the conditions that influence success of similar collaborative initiatives. However, the knowledge resulting from this research remains rather scattered and does not allow for the identification of overall patterns. Additionally, little of this research specifically focuses on sustainable agriculture. What is more, the promotion of collaboration for sustainable agriculture is further complicated by the lack of clarity of the meaning of sustainable agriculture, which is an inherently ambiguous and contested concept. This cumulative dissertation aims to address these gaps by contributing to a better understanding of how collaboration can be facilitated and designed as a means to govern for and advance sustainable agriculture. For this purpose, the dissertation addresses three sub-aims: 1) Advancing the understanding of the concept of sustainable agriculture; 2) scrutinizing the current governance system regarding its potential to facilitate or hamper collaboration; 3) assessing conceptually and empirically how actor collaboration can be facilitated as a means to govern for sustainable agriculture, both from a top-down and a bottom-up perspective. In doing so, this dissertation focuses on EU agriculture and applies a mix of methods, ranging from qualitative to quantitative dominant. The findings of this dissertation highlight that collaboration has been underappreciated and even hampered as an approach to governing for sustainable agriculture. In contrast, this dissertation argues that collaboration offers one promising way to promoting and realizing agriculture and emphasizes the need to integrate different approaches to collaboration and to sustainable agriculture.
In theory we pursue a sustainable development, but in reality we do not. An economy based on continuous growth, which evidently is not sustainable, is however the priority model almost everywhere. If we really aim at implementing sustainability, then we must radically change our economic model. Sufficiency - which calls for individuals mainly from so-called “developed countries” not to consume more than is really needed - may offer a useful alternative. We can still find some - last - examples of indigenous peoples living in a sufficient manner, all of them nowadays in those “developing countries”. We could learn at least from them that it is possible to live differently, i.e., in harmony with ourselves and our environment. This would pave the way for their - and for our all - protection, as well as the manner in which we understand at present development politics.
This dissertation examines how smallholder farming livelihoods may be more effectively leveraged to address food security. It is based on empirical research in three woredas (districts) in the Jimma Zone of southwestern Ethiopia. Findings in the chapters that follow draw on quantitative and qualitative data. In this research, the author focuses on local actors to investigate how they can be better supported in their roles as agents who have the ability to improve their livelihoods and achieve food security. This general aim is operationalized through three research questions: (i) How do livelihood strategies influence food security?; (ii) What livelihood challenges are common and how do households cope with these?; and (iii) How do social institutions, in which livelihoods are embedded, influence people's abilities to undertake livelihoods and be food secure? Using quantitative data from a survey of randomly selected households, the author applied a number of multivariate statistical analysis to determine types of livelihood strategies and to establish how these strategies are associated with capital assets and food security. Here she views livelihood strategies as a portfolio of livelihood activities that households undertake to make a living. The predominant livelihood in the study area was diversified smallholder farming involving mainly the production of crops. Based on their analyses, the authors found five types of livelihood strategies to be present along a gradient of crop diversity. Food security generally decreased with less crops being part of the livelihood strategy. The livelihood strategies were associated with households' capital assets. The status of food (in)security of each household during the lean season was measured using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). A generalized linear model established that the type of livelihood strategy a household undertook significantly influenced their food security. Other significant variables were educational attainment and gender of household head. The findings contribute evidence to the benefits of diversified livelihoods for food security. Smallholder farming in southwest Ethiopia is beset with process-related and outcome-related challenges. Here, a process-related challenge pertains to the lack of different types of capital assets that people need to be able to undertake their livelihoods, while an outcome-related challenge pertains to lack of food. The most frequently mentioned process-related challenges were associated with the natural capital either as lack in necessary ecosystem services or high levels of ecosystem disservices. Farming households typically faced the combined challenges of decreasing soil fertility, land scarcity, die-off of oxen due to diseases, and wild animal pests. Lack of cash was also common. The findings indicate that when households liquidate a physical asset in order to gain cash, the common outcome is an erosion of their capital asset base. On the other hand, when households drew on their social capital, they tended to maintain their capital asset base. Human capital, for example, in the form of available labor was also important for coping. Protecting and enhancing natural capital is needed to strengthen the basis of livelihoods in the study area, and maintaining social and human capitals is important to enable farming households to cope with challenges without eroding their capital asset base. Smallholder farming in southwest Ethiopia is embedded in a social context that creates differentiated challenges and opportunities. Gender is an axis of social differentiation on which many of the differences are based. The currently ruling Ethiopian political coalition has put important policy reforms in place to empower women. Local residents reported notable changes related to gender in the last ten years. To make sense of the changes, the authors adapted the leverage points concept. Using this concept, the authors classified the reported changes as belonging to the domains of visible gaps, social structures, and attitudes. Importantly, changes within these domains interacted. The most prominent driver of the changes observed was the government's emphasis on empowering women and government-organized interventions including gender sensitization trainings. The changes toward more egalitarian relationships at the household level were perceived by local residents to lead to better implementation of livelihoods, and better ability to be food secure. The study offers the insight that while changing deep, underlying drivers (e. g. attitudes) of systemic inequalities is critical, other leverage points such as formal institutional change and closing of certain visible gaps can facilitate deeper changes (e. g. attitudes) through interaction between different leverage points. This can inform gender transformative approaches. While positive gender-related changes have been observed, highly unequal gender norms still persist that lead to women as well as poor men being disadvantaged. Social norms which provide the basis for collective understanding of acceptable attitudes and behaviors are entrenched in people's ways of being and doing and can therefore significantly lag behind formal institutional changes. Norms influenced practices around access and control of capital assets, decision-making, and allocation of activities with important implications for who gets to participate, how, and who gets to benefit. To more effectively leverage smallholder farming for a food secure future, this dissertation closes with four key insights namely: (1) Diversified livelihoods combining food and cash crops result in better food security; (2) Enhancing natural and social capital is a requisite for viable smallholder farming; (3) Social and gender equality are strategically important in improving livelihoods and food security; and (4) Institutions particularly social norms are key to achieving gender and social equality.
Sustainability transitions research proposes fundamental changes of societal systems' organisation to overcome persistent societal challenges, such as climate change or biodiversity loss, and allowing systems to become more sustainable. This thesis adresses an underlying tension in sustainability transitions research: between transitions as an open-ended process of fundamental change and the normative direction of this change: sustainability. In doing so, three themes are in the focus of the research: individual agency, normativity and transdisciplinary collaboration. Thereby, the thesis aims to strengthen process-oriented and potentially transformative approaches to sustainability transition research, in contrast to primarily descriptive-analitical approaches. Transition management as a recent and salient example of transdisciplinary transition research is chosen to provide research framework and application context. Based on conceptual-theoretic, empirical case study and reflexive work, three main results are contributed: First, a psychologically enriched understanding of individual and sustainability related agency in conceptual and empirical understandings of transition management is developed. This builds on two perspectives: a psychologically enriched capability approach as well as the analysis of social effects (social learning, empowerment and social capital development) of transition management to capture sustainability oriented agency increases. As second main result, normative considerations, namely sustainability, are included into transition management on conceptual and empirical levels. Therein, substantive, procedural and intentional aspects of sustainability are combined: Substantive aspects are covered by proposing capabilities, behavioral freedoms to live a valuable life, as normative yardsticks to measure developments. Procedural aspects include a detailed understanding of facilitating a learning journey towards making sustainability meaningful in the local transition management cases and setting up experiments for its realiziation. Intentional aspects are addressed by linking social effects of transition management to awareness, motivations and feelings of responsibility towards sustainability. As a third main result, the transdisciplinary collaboration in transition management of creating an arena as an interactive learning space is conceptualized and explored, as well as the roles of the researchers therein. Key issues of this learning space, the community arena, are drawn out and ideal-type roles and activities of researchers in addressing these issues are proposed and empirically analysed. As synthesis of thesis results, ten principles of sustainability transition management are proposed.
In spite of growing interest in companies’ contribution to sustainable development, the implementation of corporate sustainability, i.e. the integration of environmental, social, and economic issues, is not well understood. This cumulative PhD thesis aims to answer the research question whether sustainability management is only a transitory management fashion, or whether an effective implementation is actually taking place. The thesis consists of five papers, which are either published in refereed academic journals, accepted to be published, or planned to be resubmitted. The papers analyze three important elements of the implementation of corporate sustainability: motivation (why?), organizational units (who?) and management tools (how?). Combining these three elements supplies a framework for discussing the implementation of corporate sustainability management. The results, which are mostly based on surveys of large German companies, reveal that companies predominantly manage corporate sustainability because they seek legitimacy, rather than a competitive advantage, and because they follow acknowledged standards, guidelines, or ratings (institutional isomorphism) – possibly out of uncertainty on how to best handle a concept so complex and novel. Public relations is the organizational unit engaging in sustainability management most strongly, whereas accounting, finance, and management control engage the least. Hence, corporate sustainability is currently not implemented as a crossfunctional approach. Yet, there is indication of a growing strategic relevance of corporate sustainability. This is also reflected in the awareness and application of sustainability management tools, which have been increasing continuously between 2002 and 2010 – especially in terms of integrative tools serving to balance environmental, social, and economic issues. Furthermore, market incentives are gaining in importance over time. The thesis relates these results to management fashion theory. Although there is some indication that sustainability management might in fact be a transitory fashion, an analysis over time reveals an ongoing development of the elements analyzed. Thereby, the thesis demonstrates that corporate sustainability management can be considered more than a management fashion. One implication of the analysis is that both companies and researchers are called upon to foster the implementation of corporate sustainability, with positive incentives, e.g. by markets and consumers, turning out to be promising starting points. As opposed to pressure and expectations by stakeholders, focusing on opportunities might be more suitable to induce actual change of processes, products, services, or even business models in companies. In conclusion, the author hopes to make a significant contribution to the discussion on the implementation of corporate sustainability and to stimulate the development of new theoretical approaches.
This thesis deals with the influence of sustainability communication on the purchase decision of sustainable tourism products involving German specialist tour operators. Sustainability communication is a challenge, because sustainable tourism is an abstract and vague concept which consumers find it difficult to grasp and about which they are sceptical. The service characteristics of tourism products complicate the decision making stage, which is a high-involvement situation of uncertainty to which sustainable product attributes add complexity. As an introduction, an interdisciplinary theory discussion reveals knowledge gaps in terms of the value-belief-norm theory and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). The first article, which is the first systematic literature review on the topic, reveals that there is a limited theoretical understanding of sustainability communication, a lack of practical understanding of how to design sustainability messages, and an inadequate set of methodologies for its research. It identifies knowledge gaps concerning: the holistic approach to sustainability communication; its role in the attitude-behaviour gap; an interdisciplinary theoretical understanding focusing on belief-based social psychological theories and theories of persuasion; qualitative methods; and experimental design. The second article investigates the role of sustainability communication in the attitude-behaviour gap, employing the value-belief-norm theory to explain how information is processed by special interest customers. Interview findings show that ineffective sustainability communication is the reason for the gap and that customers unintentionally booked sustainably. The study identifies eight groups of beliefs which explain the processing of sustainability attributes. Sustainability information is effective when it is value-congruent, that is, when customers perceive they can make a difference, they begin to ascribe a responsibility to themselves. The third article investigates how to design an effective sustainability message in tour operator advertising. Drawing on the ELM, the study shows that appeal type does not significantly influence persuasion but the topic presented is important. Cultural sustainability is the sustainability topic that is most persuasive for cultural tourists, while consumer prior knowledge and issue-involvement with the topic promote successful information processing.
This dissertation concerns the question of how economics can contribute to the analysis of trade-offs between values (or normative objectives). The analysis is illustrated for the case of policies that pursue the goal of sustainability. Methodologically, this is done by reflecting economic concepts in light of philosophical theories and using generic models to analyze trade-offs between particular values. In sum, the work shows how economics can help in analyzing the factual relationships between values by clarifying the set of feasible acts and outcomes. The first paper of this cumulative dissertation concerns the question what a general definition of efficiency with respect to normative objective implies about relationships between two values. In order to conceptualize relationships between values carefully, the analysis distinguishes instrumental from intrinsic values and discusses the question whether there is one intrinsic value (value monism) or many intrinsic values (value pluralism). Next, a small economic model is used to show that there can be different relationships between values such as win-win relationships and trade-offs in value-efficient states if there are three or more values. Further, the distinction between Pareto-efficiency (based on individual preferences) and value-efficiency (which can also include non-preference values) is used to study relationships between values. The second paper uses the definition of sustainability as inter- and intragenerational justice to discuss the relationship between these two objectives. The general aim of this paper is to discuss what economic concepts can contribute to the discussion of tradeoffs between justices. For this, a syntax of the concept of justice is employed, different relationships between justices are defined and economic concepts such as scarcity, efficiency and opportunity costs are transferred to the justice context. One result from this analysis is that there must be a trade-off between these two justices in such respective efficient outcomes. The third paper concerns an intertemporal mechanism leading to the well-known equity-efficiency trade-off in an intergenerational setting. For this, two central characteristics of intergenerational policy making are taken into account: irreversibility and ignorance (or unawareness). A pertinent example is the irreversible use of fossil fuels before and after the discovery of the effect of CO2 emissions on climate change. The trade-off between Pareto-efficiency and intergenerational equity that results from these two characteristics is shown in a model with two non-overlapping generations which use a non-renewable resource. In the model there is initial unawareness about an intergenerational externality from resource use that is only discovered after the irreversible use of the resource. A central result of the paper is the trade-off between intergenerational equity and efficiency that emerges if initially unknown sustainability problems arise after irreversible policies have been enacted. The fourth paper concerns the question what the concept of merit goods can contribute to discussions of sustainability. For this, the history of the concept is discussed, then merit goods are defined and connected to the philosophical literature on different conceptions of well-being. In the next step different challenges and opportunities of merit good arguments are discussed for the sustainability context. For example, it becomes clear that merit good arguments concern conceptions of well-being and do not directly concern the aspect of intergenerational distribution in sustainability problems.