Environment, innovation and sustainable development: Introduction to an interdisciplinary approach
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Innovation Economics Vol. 2, no. 8 (2011), p. 3-10
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- Description: The disappointing outcome from the United Nations Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change in December 2009 affected many social researchers who had hoped that the world leaders would shine a guiding light towards a sustainable development paradigm shift in society. A guiding light that would provide a clear pathway for all the world’s citizens to an environmentally safe and equitable “Spaceship Earth” (Boulding, 1966). Much discussion arose after this failed summit about the need for ‘bottom-up’ adaptation and resilience as the alternative. Valuable as such an approach is to address the environmental concerns, its incremental change and modest institutional reforms limit the extent of sustainable development. Paradigm shift requires creative destruction of the type Joseph Schumpeter advocated when in times of crisis. Innovation lies at the heart of such a radical approach. Based on the need to raise the profile of this innovation approach to sustainable development, the Research Network on Innovation – the sponsor of this journal – decided to organise the next biennial Spirit of Innovation conference around the theme ‘Environment, Innovation and Sustainable Development’. Thus was that on the 7th and 8th October 2010, the “Spirit of Innovation IV” Forum was held at the Euromed Management School in Marseille.
- Description: 2003009224
Localisation of the sustainable development goals in an emerging nation
- Authors: Jain, Ameeta , Courvisanos, Jerry , Subramaniam, Nava
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Public Administration and Development Vol. 41, no. 5 (2021), p. 231-243
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- Description: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), agreed to by all member countries of the United Nations, require urgent action on the world's most pressing problems. Success requires bottom-up participation of local stakeholders. This case study of Timor-Leste—a fledgling, fossil fuel-supported economy—maps the awareness and commitment of grassroots stakeholders to the SDGs and the roadblocks to localisation. Guiding this paper is Habermas’ view of societal evolution and communicative action, which aids analysing the socio-political and structural dynamics affecting SDGs localisation in a developing nation. This study reveals stakeholder inability to articulate a clear vision for the SDGs, lack of human capital and funds, a weak public-administrative system, strong socio-political nuances, and poor governance infrastructure to support multi-stakeholder relationships. This paper provides insights for developing a more nuanced and robust public intervention to support local stakeholders that will enable knowledge, cultural and communication transformations required for successful SDGs localisation. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Corporate social responsibility in regional small and medium-sized enterprises in Australia
- Authors: Moyeen, Abdul , Courvisanos, Jerry
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal of Regional Studies Vol. 18, no. 3 (2012), p. 364-391
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- Description: The recognition that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is important for business sustainability has focused the bulk of research on explicit normative arguments for its adoption by large corporations. This ignores the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and the investigation of how such firms actually perform CSR activities. This study begins with the premise that SMEs may design appropriate CSR strategies to address issues in local communities. SMEs operate within these communities and subsequently are more aware of community and environmental issues than their larger counterparts. From this emerges the aim of examining the reality of this proposition from the particular perspective of a regional city in Australia. The results show a gap between normative CSR proposals and the actual operation of CSR processes in this cohort of SMEs in a regional community. What is exposed is the complexity of CSR ‘on the ground at the business frontline’.
- Description: C1
Tax policy and innovation : A search for common ground
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry , Laramie, Anthony , Mair, Douglas
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Intervention. European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies Vol. 6, no. 2 (2009), p. 271-287
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- Description: The paper is motivated by a desire to find common ground between mainstream and post-Keynesian approaches to fiscal policy. A post-Keynesian approach with origins in Kalecki offers a promising line of enquiry which is developed here. The paper identifies the principal differences between the Keynesian and Kaleckian approaches. The possibilities are explored of finding accommodation between the mainstream and Kaleckian approaches to the taxation of greenhouse gases. The macroeconomic implications of taxing greenhouse gases are identified. However, these may be thwarted by the emergence of ›political aspects of innovation‹, akin to Kalecki’s ›political aspects of full employment‹. A Kaleckian balanced budget approach allied to fiscal incentives to innovate offers some prospect of common ground with the mainstream.
- Description: 2003007340
Regional innovation for sustainable development : An Australian perspective
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Innovation Economics Vol. 1, no. 3 (2009), p. 119-143
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- Description: 2003007338
Innovation economics and the role of the innovative entrepreneur in economic theory
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry , Mackenzie, Stuart
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Innovation Economics and Management Vol. 2, no. 14 (2014), p. 41-61
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- Description: Innovation has become a widely used, but ill-defined, everyday term in the 21st century. Firms are urged to be innovative to gain or sustain a ‘competitive edge’; consultants advertise their strategic advice as the essence of innovation; the survival of local organisations depends on the capacity building that comes from innovation; schools are exalted to have innovation in their curriculum; and universities promote themselves as leaders in innovation. Likewise, the term entrepreneur, used to describe the human agency behind innovation, is equally ill-defined in everyday use. Entrepreneurs’ value to society varies widely from positive to negative depending on the emphasis of journalists, academics, businesspersons, unionists, right-wing think tanks and left-wing activists. Such imprecise definition is, however, undesirable in academic discourse and the focus of this paper is the shifting role of the innovative entrepreneur in economic theory and some of the reasons for this dynamic. In this paper, innovation economics is defined as a body of economic theory that contends a priori that economic development is the result of appropriated knowledge, innovation and entrepreneurship operating within an institutional environment of systems of innovation. This distinguishes innovation economics from other branches of economics, including mainstream neoclassical theory, which views capital accumulation as the primary driver of economic development, chiefly in the form of economic growth. In the innovation economics paradigm, the socio-economic world functions as an open and complex system, exhibiting tendencies to adaptation. This isin contrast to neoclassical economics that regards the economy as a closed system exhibiting tendencies to mechanical equilibrium. A history of economic thought perspective is adopted in this paper to first trace out the rise of the innovative entrepreneur in early theories of political economy, to in effect create a nascent innovation economics. Then, the disappearance of innovation economics is facilitated by the infanticide of the innovative entrepreneur at the hands of neoclassical theory. In the first half of the 20th century, the history of economic thought marked the resurrection of the entrepreneur as an innovating agent by Joseph Schumpeter and then the nurturing of this agent in economic theory by Micha
Economic modelling of climate change and water in a regulated river basin
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry , Richardson, Colin
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Economic and Social Policy Vol. 14, no. 3 (2011), p. 1-28
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- Description: Focus is on agricultural production of a river basin economy and ecosystem processes relating to climate change and water supply. A generic regulated river basin model of agricultural production is integrated with an existing demand-based macroeconomic model in discrete time which has been developed previously over a series of computer simulation experiments. This is the forerunner to a fully-specified Murray-Darling Basin model. Two crops are in the model - rainfed wheat and irrigated rice - with River Basin Commission revenue and expenditure, as well as exports and imports outside the river basin economy. The model simulates 100 years of production.
- Description: 2003009165
Government funded business programs : advisory help or hindrance?
- Authors: Labas, Alan , Courvisanos, Jerry
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal of Regional Studies Vol. 27, no. 1 (2021 2021), p. 88-112
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- Description: This study seeks, through the perspective of Professional Business Advisors (PBAs), to understand how government business programs help and/or hinder the provision of small business advisory services in a regional (non-metropolitan) Australian setting. An emergent theme identifies such programs as significant conduits for regional business knowledge transmission. However, those programs are also perceived by PBAs, who deliver such programs, as imposing substantial constraints for provision of such services. The identified constraining factors include issues of PBAs’ financial viability, ineligibility of businesses to access such programs, capriciousness of programs, and clash between technology utilisation and infrastructure reliability in some non-metropolitan regional areas. Regional Australian PBAs service a heterogeneous collection of businesses across large geographic areas. Yet, the potential for PBAs to support the process of knowledge transmission is severely constrained by current government programs aimed at start-up businesses, but ignoring organisational growth. Such constraints raise concerns that have regional policy implications
Economic resilience of regions under crises : A study of the Australian economy
- Authors: Courvisanos, Jerry , Jain, Ameeta , Mardaneh, Karim
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Regional Studies Vol. 50, no. 4 (2016), p. 629-643
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- Description: Economic resilience of regions under crises: a study of the Australian economy, Regional Studies. Identifying patterns of economic resilience in regions by industry categories is the focus of this paper. Patterns emerge from adaptive capacity in four distinct functional groups of local government regions in Australia, in respect of their resilience from shocks on specific industries. A model of regional adaptive cycles around four sequential phases - reorganization, exploitation, conservation and release - is adopted as the framework for recognizing such patterns. A data-mining method utilizes a k-means algorithm to evaluate the impact of two major shocks - a 13-year drought and the Global Financial Crisis - on four functional groups of regions, using census data from 2001, 2006 and 2011. © 2015 Regional Studies Association.