An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions

Abstract

Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies. The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.

Sustainable entrepreneurship, innovation, and business models: Integrative framework and propositions for future research

“…In its current form, the BMfSI framework highlights some ways in which business models can help to commercialise sustainability innovations, whereas others are not discussed and should be addressed in future research. The conditions under which BMfSI emerge could be studied from an evolutionary perspective considering the dependencies between different organisations (Hockerts & Wüstenhagen, ; Schaltegger, Lüdeke‐Freund, et al, ) and institutional contingencies (Hannon et al, ).Studies on change in sociotechnical systems and sustainability transitions offer promising directions to embed business model studies within wider systems perspectives (Köhler et al, ). Others could take a firm perspective emphasising the role of “intrapreneurship” (cf.…”

Active sustainability actors: A life course approach

“…Sustainability transitions thus involve a wide variety of actors (Köhler et al, ; Markard et al, ). This is paralleled in the literature via an increasing interest in different actor types (Avelino & Wittmayer, ; de Haan & Rotmans, ; Fischer & Newig, ; Wittmayer et al, ).…”

“…Securing a sustainable future calls for urgent, radical action in societies globally (Le Blanc, 2015;Shaw, Burch, Kristensen, Robinson, & Dale, 2014;Thapar, Sharma, & Verma, 2019;Zeiger, Gunton, & Rutherford, 2019). The sustainability transitions literature addresses these challenges (Köhler et al, 2019). Sustainability transitions refer to long-term, multidimensional, and fundamental transformations through which established sociotechnical systems shift to more sustainable modes of production and consumption (Markard, Raven, & Truffer, 2012).…”

Transformational Collaboration for the SDGs: The Alianza Shire’s Work to Provide Energy Access in Refugee Camps and Host Communities

“…The role of intermediary actors in facilitating transformation for sustainability has also been explored in Sustainability Transitions (ST) theory. This theory aims to conceptualize and explain how systemic socio-technical changes occur to address complex sustainability problems such as those represented in the SDG agenda [36,37]. ST theory, particularly the so-called 'Multilevel Perspective', suggests that sustainability transitions take place at the interplay between three analytical levels: niches (the locus for radical innovations), socio-technical regimes (the locus of established practices and associated rules that stabilize existing systems) and an exogenous socio-technical landscape [36].…”