Search

International audience; An evolutionary economics perspective between technological innovation and public policy is applied to analyse the relationships between technological change, sustainable development and industrial competitiveness. This leads us to emphasise the fundamental role that firm's strategies vis-à-vis the endogenisation of technological change can play for giving effect to `win-win' strategies. However, allowing industrial competition to become the only factor determining `win-win' strategies could lead to `locked' technological and social options being chosen which do not contribute to overall goals of ecological, social and economic sustainability. For this reason we introduce, as complements to competitiveness, the requirement of new forms of governance in pursuit of ecological-economic sustainability.

The paper's main concern is with different decision-making models for environmental issues and with the hypotheses of rationality underlying such models. The hypothesis supported here is that most environmental problems are in a context of uncertainty, of irreversibility and of complexity. We shall explain why stressing the role of these elements implies a reversal of the traditional attitude towards decision-making. This presupposes a paradigm of economic rationality much broader that that of orthodox economics, called “procedural rationality”. Our paper is in two parts. The first part concerns the limits of the stochastic environmental approaches based on the Bayesian decision theory and on a substantive rationality hypothesis. The second part concerns the decision-making analyses based upon a procedural rationality, as well as their ability to take account of the interactions between uncertainty, irreversibility and complexity.

This article aims to help the decision-making process in the matter of sustainable development. The real dividing lines between different analyses of sustainable development are drawn on the basis of two methodological questions. The first concerns the effective inclusion or exclusion of the ecological dimension; the second concerns the choice of a rationality hypothesis. From this perspective, we explain that neoclassical theory and conventional ecology are both insufficient because they rest respectively on an economic or ecological substantive rationality. Then we posit that the analysis of the London School constitutes an attempt to combine the ecological and economic dimensions of development. However, this approach does have its limitations, ultimately using an hypothesis of expanded economic rationality that nevertheless remains basically substantive. Last, we show how an “ecological-economic” approach based on a procedural conception of rationality also employing economic- and energy-based valuation methods seems to cover more comprehensively the issues of sustainable development involving the coordination of diverse rationalities and diverse dimensions of sustainability.

Los autores revisan acuciosamente el concepto "desarrollo sostenible", mismo que encuentra aceptación debido a que ubica al crecimiento económico y a la preservación del ambiente como complementarios. Analizando los problemas ambientales desde la perspectiva neoclásica de la Teoría del Capital, Faucheux y O'Connor caracterizan los "límites ambientales" para las actividades económicas, precisando las medidas tendientes a buscar la sostenibilidad económica. Asimismo plantean la importancia de los indicadores no monetarios de sostenibilidad

This article is in support of the development of an ecological economic framework. It discusses, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the increasing use of green IT and their applications (IT for green). IT and sustainable development have had a concomitant rise and reach. The future world emerging from their respective interpretations enables, in both cases, a shift from today's questionable industrial capitalism towards post-industrial capitalism. This paper addresses the following questions: What is known about green IT and IT for green? Are smart solutions (buildings, energy grids, transport) always beneficial to an ecological economy? And, if so, in what ways? In the first part of this article, we analyse the economic, social and environmental impact of IT and argue for the need for green applications of green IT in order to achieve sustainable outcomes. The second part focuses on the managerial dimension of eco-innovation theory and presents one of the distinctive features of green applications of green IT: the collective organisation of innovation. A typology of eco-innovation aimed at reconciling IT development and green growth is then proposed explicitly addressing four kinds of changes towards sustainable development: technological, social, institutional and organisational innovation.

In the 1980s, confronted with the emergence of global environmental problems, new practices have highlighted the question of how to reconcile the attainment of economic goals with environmental protection. Firms play a fundamental role through the endogenisation of technological change, within the perspective of implementing win-win strategies. We question the role of environmental technological innovation and the conditions of their implementation. However, allowing competition among firms to become the only factor determining environmental strategies could possibly lead to lock-in situations, where technological and social options have been chosen, which may in the long term be non-sustainable. It is for this underlying reason that we introduce as complements to competitiveness, the requirement for new forms of governance., Avec l'émergence de problèmes globaux d'environnement dans les années 1980, de nouvelles pratiques visent à réconcilier l'activité économique et la préservation de la qualité environnementale. Les firmes jouent un rôle fondamental vis-à-vis d'une endogénéisation du changement technologique dans le cadre de stratégies « win-win ». Nous nous interrogeons sur le rôle de l'innovation technologique environnementale et sur les conditions de sa mise en oeuvre. Laisser l'initiative des choix stratégiques en matière environnementale à la seule compétitivité industrielle peut conduire à des options technologiques et sociales « verrouillées » loin de toute trajectoire de soutenabilité. Aussi, à côté de la compétitivité d'autres notions comme la « gouvernance » sont-elles introduites., Faucheux Sylvie, Nicolai Isabelle. Les firmes face au développement soutenable : changement technologique et gouvernance au sein de la dynamique industrielle. In: Revue d'économie industrielle, vol. 83, 1er trimestre 1998. Dynamique industrielle et contraintes environnementales, sous la direction de Gérard Mondello. pp. 127-146.