Sustainable development has become a central objective of policy worldwide. Although the term is widely used, there is little agreement on what it means in practice and how progress toward it can be measured. The European Commission, as part of its Programme on Competitive and Sustainable Growth, commissioned the SUMMA (SUstainable Mobility, policy Measures and Assessment) project. Among SUMMA's objectives were to define and operationalize the concept of sustainable transport and mobility in terms of its environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and to define outcome indicators from the transport system that can help policy makers monitor progress toward its achievement. To achieve these objectives, we used the systems approach, which identifies the interrelationships among the elements of a complex system and helps in the design of policies to steer the system toward sustainability. This article describes the first phase of the systems approach: the set of outcome indicators that we developed and how we defined the transport system in terms of three markets-a movement market, a transport market, and a traffic market-in which choices are made that result in traffic streams. The traffic streams determine the values of the outcome indicators, which can then be used to identify good policies. The approach is illustrated with examples from the SUMMA project. Environmental Practice 8: 24-48 (2006)
Despite growing engagement by business practitioners in regenerative sustainability, there is little research into what factors contribute to its successful implementation. This paper offers first steps to close that gap. It examines theoretical foundations of and proposes empirical research for studying such innovative business practices. Our literature review draws on research in natural sciences, organization and management studies, corporate sustainability, and business strategy to theoretically (1) define regenerative sustainability, (2) explore how adopting principles of regeneration can help firms achieve “true business sustainability” (Dyllick & Muff, 2016: 163), and (3) assess potential benefits, obstacles, and enablers of such radically different business models. We then propose an in-depth interpretive case study methodology to empirically investigate the phenomenon of interest, namely how proactive firms effectively enact regenerative sustainability principles. The paper closes with potential implications of the proposed study for management theory and practice and offers ideas for future research.
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