Category: Cities

Corporate sanctions in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Summary of the discussion with Sophia Opatska at CBS

◦ 8 min read ◦

This blog post is a repost and has first been published by UCU Business School on 5th of April 2022.

In normal life, I am a vice-rector for the strategic development of the best Ukrainian private nonprofit University and founding dean of UCU Business School. Right now, I am one of 4 million Ukrainians who left Ukraine because of bomb shelling and war, which Russia started on February 24th.

Sophia Opatska, 2022

What happens in Ukraine right now is devastating. Every day more and more people die, more and more cities are ruined. Over the weekend, the Kyiv region was liberated after a month of occupation. Pictures of Bucha (a beautiful small town near Kyiv) can make any normal person sick: mass executions, civilians being killed on the streets, lying there for days and weeks, half-burned bodies of raped and naked women, robbed houses.  Those pictures are telling the terrible truth about Russia, russians, and their war in Ukraine. There is no excuse for terrorism and what we live through and observed by the whole civilized World – is terrorism and genocide. 

Since this meeting and discussion is about business and economics, there should be numbers. So I will try to get into them, but no numbers can validate what Ukrainians saw in their cities after russian invaders left them. 

According to various estimates, our economy is ruined by between 500 billion and trillions of dollars. In 5 weeks. And it will take years and years to rebuild Ukraine. 

I think this is the first time in history when war is so connected to economics.

Unfortunately, Russia’s domestic political stability at the moment looks high. Protest sentiments in Russia are low, there has been no significant split between elites, and the loyalty of the security forces to Putin is not yet in question. 

There is little dissatisfaction with the consequences of the war among a small number of elites, mostly «technocrats» and «old officials». Young people under the age of 30 and the urban middle class are the most affected by the current situation and sanctions out of the population capable of protest. 

There are two types of sanctions – official sanctions of countries and private companies.

The G7 and the EU have decided to disconnect several Russian banks from the SWIFT system. The disconnection of banks from SWIFT does not limit their ability to make payments in foreign currency, but slows down payments and makes them more expensive.

It is important to note that the problems of banking transactions are rather temporary. At the moment, this leads to supply disruptions and rising costs, but over time, both importers and banks are adapting. Alternative and fast methods of payment through third countries or analogs of the SWIFT system will be created (for example, Russian SPFP and Chinese CIPS).

And if we are talking about the economics, let me give you 10 consequences of sanctions in the near future (1-6 months, key – 2nd quarter of 2022) for Russia in order to understand if and how they help Ukraine, mostly leading to changes within russia itself. As a basis, I took a report from the Ukrainian Institute of the Future that analyses the impact of the sanctions.

1. Devaluation. During the month of the war, the Russian ruble fell by 19% against the US dollar. In March, the European Union and the United States imposed a ban on the import of banknotes into Russia. Though the official exchange rate almost did not change on the «black» market, one dollar is estimated at 250-300 rubles.

It is believed that the devaluation of the ruble by 10% leads to inflation by 1%. Accordingly, the fall of the ruble will lead to a «weight of wallet», a reduction in real household income, and a reduction in effective demand.

2. Reduction in the supply of imported products, a sharp narrowing of supply, shortages of certain goods.

According to FourKites, since the beginning of the war, imports to Russia have fallen by 59%, including imports of household goods and industrial goods.

3. Inflation. A reduction in supply is always an increase in prices. 

First, the rise in prices will affect the «middle-class urban family», which has a high share of imported products in the consumer basket. Due to sanctions and inflation, the consumer line is expected to change in the long run, namely simplification, fewer high-tech products, and an increase in the share of Chinese and Indian goods (medicines, gadgets, cars, etc.). 

In villages with conventionally grown potatoes, locally produced pasta, oil, and sugar, it may be a little easier at first. However, with a certain time lag, prices will rise for everything, including domestic products. And for low-income people, whose consumer basket consists mainly of food and medicine, the consequences will be the most traumatic. 

Inflation is hitting the poorest. But the poor are not a protest power. The likelihood that they will join the protest audience remains low. It is most likely that 70-80% of the population will suffer, trying to «squeeze» something out of the state and thus become even more dependent on the state.

4. Fall of the industry: decline in production, fall in employment, unemployment. The largest hit by the sanctions is the aviation sector, the automotive industry, mechanical engineering, the electronics sector, the oil, and gas sector (its modernization), and metallurgy. The more technological the production, the higher the share of imported components, and, accordingly, the more it will suffer from sanctions.

If the shutdowns take place, it will have a multiplier effect on the economy. And this can be disruptive. e.g., The Russian car industry employs about 300 thousand people, and another 700-900 thousand are employed in Russian companies that are suppliers to the car industry.

5. Falling incomes and employment in services. The first thing that consumers save on when real incomes are reduced are services: beauty salons, fitness centers, catering, restaurants, recreation, and more. The tourism sector is likely to fall. A decline is expected in trade. This is an important part of the Russian economy: the share of wholesale and retail trade is almost 12% of GDP and 15% of all employees. 

6. A blow to the construction and real estate market. About 40% of Russian companies have already frozen their construction projects across the country. This is due to the imposition of sanctions against Russia, which leads to disruptions in the supply of construction materials, their shortage, and a rise in price. According to experts, since the beginning of the war, the cost of building materials has increased in some segments by 80-100%. Some companies decide to freeze some projects indefinitely and redirect resources to complete near-completed projects.

7. In Russia, it is planned to transfer to the state assets owned by foreign companies that have left the market. The Public Consumer Initiative has created a list of 59 companies that can be nationalized, including McDonald’s, Volkswagen, Apple, IKEA, Microsoft, IBM, Shell, Porsche, Toyota, H&M, and others.

8. Exit from partnerships of oil and gas foreign partners. I am not going to name all, just a couple: 

  • BP sells a stake in Rosneft (19.75%).
  • Shell is leaving the joint venture with Gazprom and is terminating its participation in the Nord Stream-2 project.
  • Exxon Mobil stops oil and gas production in Russia (on the island of Sakhalin) and stops new investments. The company leaves the Sakhalin-1 consortium and recalls American specialists from Russia.

What is critical here is that companies are leaving with their own technologies, including offshore drilling technologies for gas production, which Russia needs to develop new fields.

9. Sharp increase in interest rates on loans and lack of working capital in the business.

10. Reduction of microcredit (lending for those who cannot reach the next salary). People who live from salary to salary cannot get a loan today. This is again a factor in the growth of poverty, the barbarism of the population, and the growth of crime.

Russia’s economy is going down. Experts talk about the beginning of the economic winter in Russia, use the term “Iranisation” of the Russian economy, and draw parallels between Russia and North Korea.

Current sanctions have critical consequences in terms of living standards and quality of life in Russia over the next 10 years. Lack of prospects, opportunities to realize their life potential, the need to survive instead of making plans for the future and development – all this calls into question the feasibility of life in Russia on the horizon of 5-10-20 years and makes the issue of emigration more relevant than ever. Summing up in one sentence, we can say that «Vladimir Putin stole the future from the Russians.»

At the same time, the basis of internal stability in Russia is Putin’s personal image and absolute trust in him PERSONALLY by the population, not the government, parliament, or government as a whole. It holds an elite consensus, as well as a social contract in Russia, which he himself guarantees and embodies.

I would like to finish again with images of BUCHA – a beautiful town near Kyiv that made me sick on Saturday evening and the entire day yesterday. People’s lives cannot wait for another 10 years so that the current status of sanctions works slowly and mildly on society which Putin created in russia and people accepted by voting for him for 22 years and western society inviting him every time to the table. There is a huge moral dilemma in what we currently experience, there is a huge challenge to democratic order with respect to Human dignity, freedom of speech, and free society which Europe was building for many years. 

There are many concerns: what if the situation engages more countries, what if we give more military weapons to Ukraine, what if… many more what if? But I would like you to ask yourself – What if Ukraine loses? Everybody in the free world will lose, as when they come here they will do the same as they did in BUCHA. 

CBS Permahaven: A new campus chapter

By Isabel Fróes and Maribel Blasco

◦ 2 min read ◦

Sustainability – finding ways to walk the talk

We report here on a new campus initiative to create a permaculture garden on the CBS campus, opposite the Kilen building and very close to Fasanvej Metro Station. CBS owns a piece of fairly large plot of land here that is currently unused.  

A design workshop was held on 4th March, where different groups of participants (students, faculty, representatives from Frederiksberg municipality and others) worked collaboratively on a design for Permahaven.

‘Permaculture’ stands for ‘permanent agriculture’, a term coined by Tasmanian Bill Mollison in 1978.  He defined it as:

“The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.” 

Permaculture offers a holistic framework for creating sustainable ways of living. It aims to integrate land, resources, people and the environment by maximizing beneficial relationships, observing, emulating and working with rather than against nature to enhance resilience, diversity, productivity and stability (Hopkins 2020; Permaculturenews.org 2020). Permaculture advocates three overarching ethics: earth care, people care, and fair share, and twelve design principles – the petals of the so-called ‘permaculture flower’ (see Figure below.

Permaculture Flower – The seven domains of permaculture action (https://permacultureprinciples.com/flower)

Ultimately, the goal is to foster responsible cultivation, production and consumption through a whole-systems approach. But permaculture is much more than that – increasingly, the concept is being applied beyond the field of agriculture to support and inspire more sustainable lifestyles, to improve mental health, sanitize consumption, and design livable, humane social systems (Blasco, forthcoming).

What can a permaculture garden bring to a business school? Regenerating learning through permaculture

More from the event

About the Authors

Isabel Fróes is a postdoc at MSC Department at Copenhagen Business School working in three EU projects (Cities-4-People, iPRODUCE and BECOOP). Isabel also has wide industry experience and has worked both as a user researcher and service design consultant for various companies in Denmark and internationally. For more detail please see her Linkedin profile.

Maribel Blasco is Associate Professor at MSC Department at CBS. Her research focuses on management learning and higher education, notably at business schools; as well as cross-cultural inquiry. She is interested in learning not only as the transfer of know-how and technical skills but also more broadly as a process of identity formation, acculturation and development of tacit abilities such as intercultural competences, ethical awareness and creativity and innovation.

Are sustainable and healthy diets always compatible? Needs for an emic-oriented cultural research on sustainable consumption

By Fumiko Kano Glückstad

◦ 6 min read ◦

It is widely acknowledged that a plant-based diet is healthier than an animal-based diet (Willett, et al. 2019). However, a group of Japanese researchers recently published a thought-provoking article demonstrating that a lower diet-related Greenhouse gas emission (GHGE) has generally resulted in an inadequate nutrient intake among Japanese adults (Sugimoto et al. 2020).

Their results seem to support the fact that the Japanese Government has excluded any dietary-related initiatives from its long-term national strategies concerning the targeted 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In other words, Japanese opinion leaders seem to challenge the generally accepted viewpoint of a direct positive correlation between a sustainable diet and a healthy diet, contradicting widely accepted European studies and initiatives (e.g. Sjörs et al. 2017). This apparent controversial observation motivated me to look into the historical development of meat consumption on a global scale. Most importantly, the recently published guiding principles by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019 state that “Sustainable Healthy Diets” are a trade-off between the two dimensions: sustainability and healthiness of diets. Thus, countries should decide on such trade-offs in consideration with their situation and goals (FAO & WHO, 2019). 

The following figure indicates such a trade-off situation for various geographical regions and it clearly shows that the meat consumption in Western countries is obviously higher than the rest of the world such as compared to e.g., Africa or Asia, although a substantial increase of meat consumption is observed in both China and Japan.

In particular, the main increases observed in China and Japan seem to be well-synchronized with the periods of their respective economic developments that simultaneously triggered their modernization (Westernization) process in their markets. However, the curves of Japanese and Chinese meat consumption also show a noticeable difference. Whereas the meat consumption in China has steeply increased since the 1980es, Japan seems to moderate its increase from the early 1990es and ahead, which is most likely explained by their respective economic developments. However, in this blog, I want to supplement these observations with some personal insights on what has happened in Japan during this period through my work experiences in the related industry.

Meat consumption in this blog refers to the average supply of meat across the population shown in this figure. Food supply is defined as food accessible for human consumption meaning the food remaining for human use after deduction of all non-food utilizations. Source: Our World in Data https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/meat-supply-per-person

During the Japanese bubble economy in the 1980es to the early 1990es, the Japanese middle class had increasingly wider opportunities to be exposed to the Western food culture due to their Westernization. This somewhat alarmed key Japanese health professionals, nutritionists, food experts and industries who considered a ”Western lifestyle and food culture” as a source of lifestyle-related chronic diseases e.g., diabetes 2 and cardiovascular issues, which would gradually impact Japanese consumers.

This subsequently triggered a countless number of initiatives aimed to nudge a wide range of the population towards a healthier diet. The initiatives were eventually formalized as a Health Promotion Act in 2002 and the Basic Law on “Shokuiku (food and nutrition education)” in 2005 by the Japanese government (MAFF, 2019).

Source: Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries. 2019. “A Guide to Shokuiku.” https://www.maff.go.jp/j/syokuiku/guide/pdf/00_en_guide.pdf

The Shokuiku act has since become a comprehensive program targeting everyone from school children to the elderly, and its initiatives have involved a broad range of Japanese stakeholders, not only the central and local governments, health professionals and nutritionists but also food and restaurant businesses and their consumers.

The Shokuiku program has promoted the nutritional education from a holistic viewpoint and emphasized the importance of enjoying healthy meals from societal and cultural perspectives through various sensory food experiences. As a consumer researcher in the 1990es in one of Japan’s largest high-tech companies producing various kitchen appliances, I also personally participated in a variety of initiatives involving consumer organizations, health professionals, nutritionists and food and restaurant businesses to nudge consumers towards a healthy diet at that time. 

In a European context, nudging consumers towards a sustainable and healthy diet usually implies the replacement of an animal-based diet with a plant-based diet with emphasis on ingredients. One major difference to the Japanese nudging initiatives is that the Shokuiku promotion has encouraged consumers to learn how to select “nutritionally balanced meals” in their daily life while enjoying variations in sensory food experiences. Consumers have many ways to achieve this by following the “Japanese food guide spinning top” that can be easily followed by a wide range of population groups, i.e. from school children to the elderly (see the below picture). The maintenance of a moderate meat consumption level observed from the Japanese curve in the above figure might be partially attributed to such ‘enjoyable’ Shokuiku initiatives (see Yoneda, 2019).

Japan has been able to moderate its overall meat consumption without specific promotions of plant-based diets also thanks to the traditional Japanese food culture that is originally rooted in a plant-rich diet. Thus, in a Japanese context, it is perceived possible to achieve a well-balanced diet while simultaneously enjoying variations in sensory food experiences, in other words, nudging a healthy diet can be perceived as an enjoyable experience. Interestingly, Kanemoto et al. (2019) recently reported that meat consumption only weakly explains the difference between high- and low food carbon footprints (FCF) among 60,000 Japanese households. This study ponders that Japanese should (also) consider restricting their consumption in other areas than meat consumption with a higher estimated FCF such as restaurant foods, confectionary and alcohol. 

Source: Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries. 2019. “A Guide to Shokuiku.” https://www.maff.go.jp/j/syokuiku/guide/pdf/00_en_guide.pdf

These observed trends indicate the importance of fully understanding social, cultural and dietary contexts in various countries and regions when researching on sustainable food consumption because food is inherently deeply rooted in the specific cultures. In other words, sustainable consumption studies should ideally shed more light on an emic approach addressing a specific sample of that region and discuss adaptability of such studies to countries outside of the specific region with due respect of the embedded cultural contexts. 

About the Author:

Fumiko Kano Glückstad is Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Cognition at the Copenhagen Business School. She works in the area of cross-cultural psychology and her recent project “iBeauty” funded by the third largest Japanese cosmetic company investigates associations between personal values, beauty and well-being in cross-cultural contexts. She previously worked as a consumer researcher and product concept designer of kitchen appliances at Panasonic Corporation, one of the largest Japanese electronics industry enterprises.

To stay or to go: Corporate complicity in human rights abuses after the coup d’état in Myanmar

By Verena Girschik & Htwe Htwe Thein

◦ 2 min read ◦

Foreign investors in Myanmar have come under increasingly intense pressure to cut ties with the Myanmar military since the military coup on 1st February 2021. Immediately after the coup, Japan’s Kirin Beer announced its decision to cut ties with its joint venture partner MEHL, i.e. the commercial arm of the military. However, fellow investors did not immediately follow Kirin’s withdrawal. Instead, they appeared to be treading water to rid out the storm. 

Myanmar had been undergoing democratic transition since 2011, promising developments and luring investors’ interests as the last frontier of the Southeast Asian market. Indeed, the democratic transition had pathed the way for economic and developmental achievements, attracted investments in several sectors such as garment manufacturing. Yet then the military took back power, among others to secure its economic interests.

Governments and civil society in their home countries have been calling on companies to act responsible and not to do business with the military. 

The pressure on companies who had been sourcing from Myanmar, including popular fashion brands like H&M and Bestseller, has been mounting. H&M and Bestseller did respond to the call and did suspend their orders from Myanmar before deciding to resume orders in May. Several foreign investors have withdrawn as the military’s attack on the civilians intensified and the international community stepped up their sanctions regime. The latest step was the refusal of the ASEAN not to invite the military leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to the summit in October 2021. 

But is leaving the country really “the right thing to do”?

Companies who stay support the military in one way or another, for example by paying taxes directly to the military or paying rent or other fees to one of the military conglomerates (MEHL). Such payments from corporate investors provide a financial lifeline to the continuation of the military rule, hence, funding is a very important aspect of this dilemma for foreign investors and policy makers alike. The governments of the U.S., UK, Canada, the European Union have imposed sanctions targeting military interests. However, those sanctions so far have fallen short of targeting it where it would really hurt the military, in particular in the oil and gas sector that provides a lot of revenue. To weaken the military’s financial lifeline, the shadow government and activists have been calling for companies to stop all kinds of payments to the military. Inside the country, boycotts of military intestates have intensified. For instance, householders have been participating in an electricity bill boycott, thus using the withdrawal of this kind of support as a form of resistance. Not surprisingly, many companies have by now decided to pull out. 

Yet while leaving the country ceases support to the military, it also entails that companies no longer provide goods and services (including essential services) and support to the workers and civil society (e.g. Telenor;  Germany’s food retailer Metro. Companies have been supporting workers by sustaining safe workplaces, thereby securing workers’ incomes and stability.  What is more, their support has enabled and sustained social movements. For example, women union leaders in the garment industry have been a driving force in anti-military protests. 

Given the severity of human rights violations by the military, companies ought not to continue business as usual. Only by leaving can they cut all ties with the military and avert their complicity in atrocious human rights abuses. But by leaving, they also cease support to their most vulnerable stakeholders. The impact on the social contributions (via CSR) and Myanmar civil society, especially their workers, might be devastating. 

About the Authors

Verena Girschik is Assistant Professor of CSR, Communication, and Organization at Copenhagen Business School (Denmark). She adopts a communicative institutionalist perspective to understand how companies negotiate their roles and responsibilities, how they perform them, and with what consequences. Empirically, she is interested in activism in and around multinational companies and in business–humanitarian collaboration. Her research has been published in the Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, Business & Society, and Critical Perspectives on International Business. She’s on Twitter: @verenacph

Htwe Htwe Thein is an Associate Professor in International Business at Curtin University, Australia. She is internationally known for her work on business and foreign investment in Myanmar and has published in leading journals including Journal of World Business, Journal of Industrial Relations, Journal of Contemporary Asia, International Journal of Cross-Cultural Management and Feminist Economics (and international publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Routledge and Sage). She is also well-known as a commentator in media and press on the Myanmar economy and developments since the military takeover on 1 February 2021.

The fear of becoming the hotspot of infectious diseases: Who is concerned and why?

By Fumiko Kano Glückstad

◦ 4 min read ◦

Denmark is opening the borders for tourists from our neighboring countries in Northern Europe after a long period of lock-down restrictions. This is good news for the Danish tourism having suffered with substantial revenue losses as the consequence of the Covid-19 crisis. Whereas the European countries are optimistic about the opening of their societies along with the progress of their vaccination programs, Japan in the Far East is tightening its border entry restrictions due to the latest state of emergency declarations.

Recent Japanese opinion surveys clearly indicate that Japanese are concerned about hosting the Olympic Games in Tokyo expected to kick-off in just two months. At a glance, the adverse reactions by the Japanese population seem to be triggered by the current state of emergency in addition to the delay of implementing a nation-wide vaccination program.

However, such attitudes were already indicated in a cross-cultural study conducted for the period 10 – 24 July 2020 addressing residents in the following four countries: Denmark (n=1,005), Japan (n=1,091), Italy (n=1,005) and China (n=1,013). In this blog, I will present some fundamental cultural differences observed between the Europeans and the Far East Asians investigated in this study.

In an article recently published in Frontiers in Psychology by Glückstad et al., 2021, it is reported that Japanese are generally very concerned about their local community becoming a hotspot of infectious diseases. This study asked respondents how much they agree or disagree (1: Strongly disagree — 7: Strongly agree) to the statement:

“It is concerning that our community will be crowded by foreign tourists and will potentially become a hotspot of infectious diseases”

as well as other statements explaining several factors, amongst others: 

  • their intentions of pleasure seeking (enjoying cafés and restaurants, travelling abroad as soon as possible and similar enjoyments)
  • their risk perception (worried about becoming infected, getting ill and infecting others)
  • their risk avoidance (avoiding larger groups, public transportation and travelling to destinations with high reproduction, selecting destinations with hygiene and less crowded destinations)
  • their intention to behave responsible (keeping social distance, cleaning up public spaces, using disinfectants before and after shopping)   
  • their expectation for the society to behave responsibly (tourists visiting their local community should behave properly, local businesses should make their community clean and safe, individuals should contribute to minimize the risk of spreading, importance for their local businesses to have inbound tourism)
  • their attitudes to mask wearing and hygiene (wear mask, feel safe if businesses indicate sanitary standards and if staffs wear mask)

In our recent Frontiers article, we conducted a Bayesian Network analysis (see Fig. 1) which indicates that, in Denmark and Italy, respondents who expressed higher intentions for pleasure seeking behaviors have higher probabilities of being less concerned about their local community becoming a hotspot of infectious diseases, and vice versa.

This European trend is rational in a way that the motivational drivers to seek hedonistic experiences are conflicting with the conservative risk avoidance attitudes and behaviors. However, in Japan, disregarding the level of intentions for pleasure seeking behaviors, the level of concern about their community becoming a hotspot of infectious diseases stays around 5.5 (at the level between ‘somewhat agree’ and ‘agree’). The Chinese reacted rather similar to the Japanese respondents, however, their level of concern stays around 4.6-4.8 (at the level between ‘neutral’ and ‘somewhat agree’). 

Figure 1: Total effect of factors X on the target variable Y (concern about one’s local community becoming a hotspot of an infectious disease) 

Source: modified from (Glückstad et al. 2021)

The results of our studies clearly highlight an important cultural difference. That is, Japanese who seek hedonistic experiences expressed their concern about their local community becoming a hotspot of infectious diseases caused by inbound tourism, whereas Danes and Italians who seek hedonistic experiences were less concerned about this issue, as for the Summer 2020. This difference could be explained by the so-called “independent self-schema” typically held by Westerns (Europeans) and the “interdependent self-schema” typically held by Far East Asians.

In other words, Danes and Italians who are typically based on an “independent self-schema” would realize the “positivity of the personal self” through their pleasure-seeking behaviors. In such a scenario, they would be less concerned about their local community becoming a hotspot of infectious diseases. On the other hand, Japanese who are typically based on an “interdependent self-schema” would consider a balance among different selves in their in-group relationship important and prioritize the protection of their in-group communities. The survey results presented in Glückstad et al. (2021) and the adverse reaction by Japanese to the recent Japanese opinion surveys about being host of the Olympic Games in Tokyo are good examples of such protective attitudes identified in the society based on the interdependent self-schema.

Further reading

Glückstad F.K., Wiil U.K., Mansourvar M. and Andersen P.T. (2021) Cross-Cultural Bayesian Network Analysis of Factors Affecting Residents’ Concerns About the Spread of an Infectious Disease Caused by Tourism. Frontiers in Psychology.

Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (2010). Cultures and selves: A cycle of mutual constitution. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(4), 420–430. 

Uchida, Y., Norasakkunkit, V., & Kitayama, S. (2004). Cultural Constructions of Happiness: Theory and Empirical Evidence. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5, 223–239. 

About the Author

Fumiko Kano Glückstad (FKG) is Associate Professor of Cross-Cultural Cognition at the Copenhagen Business School. Her main research interests are currently centered on cross-cultural psychology, cognitive psychology, consumer psychology and data sciences. Her research focuses on data-driven consumer analyses centers on consumers’ value priorities in life and other factors that affect their attitudes and behaviors. In particular, FKG has extensive experience in consumer research on health, dietary, environment and personal care products from Far East industries.

Photo by takahiro taguchi on Unsplash

Impact of COVID-19 on mortality inequalities: The case of France

By Clément Brébion

◦ 3 min read ◦

Despite an unprecedented worldwide decline in mortality over the last century, a substantial income gradient in life expectancy persists within most countries. In the US for instance, the 1% richest men have a life expectancy at the age of 40 that is 15 years larger than the poorest 1% (difference of 10 years for women) and this spread is currently increasing. In France (on which this blog post is based), the income gradient is of a similar size despite a more egalitarian access to health care.

Pandemics likely amplify this spread because they reveal latent inequalities in individual health capital and because they spread differently across living environments. Our recent study reveals that the COVID-19 crisis, which epitomizes such massive mortality shock on a worldwide scale, is not an outlier in this respect.

A few definitions

We analyse the impact of COVID-19 on mortality inequalities over the whole year 2020 in France, one of the most severely hit country in the world. We use comprehensive registered data, allowing us to study the evolution of mortality as well as the income level of each municipality of metropolitan France. Given the unreliability of public data on deaths attributed to COVID, we focus on excess mortality occurring in each municipality, defined as the deviation in 2020 all-cause mortality with respect to the average of 2019 and 2018. The link between poverty and morality related to the epidemic is thus analysed by comparing excess mortality between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ municipalities, where ‘poor’ is defined as belonging to the poorest 25% of municipalities (‘Q1’ hereafter).

Two waves that have affected more the poor municipalities 

Figure 1 below shows that, as in many European countries in 2020, France has been hit by two distinct waves that peaked in April (17,000 extra-deaths) and November (15,100 deaths), respectively. Each time, a lockdown was implemented at the national level to reduce the spread of the disease (March, 17 to May, 11 & October 30 to December 15). The first lockdown was the most stringent and has seemingly worked best to reduce casualties to COVID-19.

Figure 1: The figure represents the difference between the monthly number of deaths in 2020 and its average over 2019 and 2018 in France

Figure 2 shows the distribution of excess mortality across municipalities according to their income. Each month, the figure shows the average number of abnormal deaths that occurred since the beginning of the year in each group of municipalities (per 10k. inhabitants). While no specific pattern can be seen over the first three months of 2020, a marked difference between the two groups of municipalities appears in April (wave 1), that further grows as the second wave takes place (October-December). 

In-depth analyses tell us that excess mortality in poor municipalities was 30% larger than in non-poor municipalities in 2020 (2.6 more extra-deaths per 10k. inhabitants). Our research shows that this spread directly relates to COVID-19 and is not explained by differences in the geographical localisation, in the share of old-age inhabitants or in the life conditions under the lockdown between rich and poor municipalities.

Figure 2: The graph plots the cumulative sum of all excess deaths per 10,000 inhabitants from January 2020 for poor and non-poor municipalities in French urban areas.

The fact that the income gradient uncovered during the first wave is not compensated during the second wave, but rather reappears with regularity every time the epidemic returns must be emphasized. One can indeed show that the income gradient is the strongest in areas that got most affected by COVID-19 in 2020. If further epidemic waves occurred – and some signs suggest that it has already started in France as well as in several other countries – our result suggest that, once again, the poorest municipalities will suffer greater losses.

Worse housing conditions and higher exposure through employment

What are the main differences between poor and non-poor municipalities that explain the income gradient in Covid-19 mortality? Our analysis highlights the key mediating role of labour market and housing conditions, in line with the idea that local factors are important determinants of the spread of epidemics. More specifically, the larger share of essential workers and of overcrowding housing almost fully explain the income gradient in COVID-19 related mortality. Interestingly, labor-market exposure remains an important determinant of COVID-19 mortality across both waves, while the role of housing conditions decreases over time, probably because the second lockdown was less stringent. 

Our work shows that the current health crisis amplifies already existing socio-economic inequalities. It also suggests that public policies aiming at limiting its effects should primarily focus on the poorest municipalities, notably by protecting workers as much as possible in the short term and by improving housing conditions in the medium term.

References

Brandily, P., Brébion, C., Briole, S., & Khoury, L. (2021). “A Poorly Understood Disease? The Impact of COVID-19 on the Income Gradient in Mortality over the Course of the Pandemic” , Working Paper, n° 2020-44, Paris School of Economics.

About the Author

Clément Brébion joined CBS in September 2020 as a postdoctoral researcher.  He received his PhD in economics in November 2019 from the Paris School of Economics. His main research interests are labour economics, economics of education and industrial relations. He has a particular interest into comparative research. More recently, he started working on the EU H2020 project HECAT that aims at developing and piloting an ethical algorithm and platform for use by PES and jobseekers.

Arguing for Climate Adaptation

By Stella Whittaker

◦ 3 min read ◦

This month saw the publication of the Climate Policy Initiative’s (CPI) long awaited analysis of climate finance flows in cities.  Each year the CPI publish an analysis of the global landscape for climate finance but this year that work was supplemented by this urban analysis.  There will also be another forthcoming CPI report  due in April 2021 – State of Cities Climate Finance Report which will help paint the full picture.  

Cities and urban communities across the globe are highly vulnerable to climate change – heat waves, extreme weather volatility, floods, droughts, coastal inundation, and vector borne diseases. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) data indicates that in 2018, 85% of cities reported major climate-related disruptions, including flash and surface flooding and extreme weather events like heat waves and droughts.

There is an urgency for much more discussion, research and attention on climate finance to address climate adaptation needs in cities. While many cities have begun planning policies and programs to build resilience towards climate hazards, the how and where of finance for those activities is less understood.  

It is plain to see from this practitioner-based work that climate finance for adaptation is not being supplied or demanded at a scale that is commensurate with the size of the impacts of climate change.  Scholars have found that here are significant data and reporting challenges and a myriad of policy challenges and barriers.  I am stressing here the need to argue loud and long for adaptation along with mitigation activities.

CPI recorded annual global climate finance flows of USD 546 billion in 2018. Of this only 4% can be attributed to adaptation. Finance flow in cities for adaptation is particularly problematic. The CPI also found:

Between 2010 and 2014, cities received less than 5% (in the range of USD 109 Million) of global adaptation finance.

Morgan Richmond, Nidhi Upadhyaya and Angela Ortega Pastor, CPI, 2021

So, based on current estimates, despite all the difficulties with measurement and tracking, potentially less than 1% of global climate finance is flowing to cities each year for adaptation, which is much less than the USD 11-20 billion that what the World Resources Institute (WRI) stated be needed on an annual basis to protect global urban infrastructure from climate risks (WRI, 2019).

This month I launched a new Linkedin Group Adaptation Finance – this is a discussion, research and professional development group for investors, governments and academics alike dedicated to developing an understanding of climate finance for adaptation. By following the Group there is an opportunity to participate in my PhD climate finance research (survey, interview, focus group or information provision), whilst learning and sharing in the latest research and trends from various industries. As climate adaptation practitioners, investors, governments, academics, scientists and researchers we rarely meet to share knowledge and experiences, please join in this unique collaboration. I want to build an active research environment for both investors and city government focused on climate adaptation. 

In addition, in the Group:

  • WE will analyse climate finance flows in cities.
  • WE will also analyse activity against internationally recognized benchmarks for appropriate urban climate change adaptation financing. 
  • WE will collate innovative climate finance practice.
  • WE will generate new knowledge on how to deliver and finance large-scale innovative city financing solutions through public and/or private stakeholders. 

In Arguing for Adaptation there are five practical things to think about in getting the balance right:

  1. Make climate adaptation an equal priority to climate mitigation
  2. Understand future climate risks to your business and/or constituency (look at the guidance from the Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)
  3. Understand climate finance flows in your city and region(s) you operate in
  4. Enter into a dialogue with investors and cities to understand each other’s challenges and opportunities
  5. Look for and prioritize climate initiatives that deliver dual or even multiple benefits – climate resilience, mitigation, natural capital etc. such as nature-based solutions NbS

If you like a good cause and a good argument, then please join me. 

About the Author

Stella Whittaker is a PhD Research Fellow who is undertaking a PhD in climate finance at Copenhagen Business School, at the department of Management, Culture & Communications. Stella is a specialist in the field of sustainability, circular economy and climate change. She has worked for over 30 years as a senior executive in sustainability, climate change, infrastructure sustainability & environment.

Innovating Under Pressure – Grassroots’ social and distributed manufacturing during the pandemic

By Isabel Fróes

As Bowie almost made a prediction when he sang in his lyrics from 1981: ‘It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about/Watching some good friends screaming “Let me out!”/’, 2020 proved to be a year of challenges, which however took us to higher grounds of learning and collaboration in many unexpected ways.  

The sudden changes and lockdowns across the world led by Covid-19 sparked many initiatives and innovation in various fields. As presented in a previous blog post, it created opportunities for urban spaces to be rethought, experimenting with expanding and further developing various mobility formats.

Beyond urban spaces, the pandemic also became a fuel to push initiatives in other fronts, such as social and local manufacturing. 

Makerspaces and local production initiatives were well described in a recent blog post by my colleague Efthymios Altsitsiadis. During the pandemic, makerspaces became more than a niche, through shared content and distributed leadership, these spaces became relevant production resources. Makers collaborated and engaged in locally producing personal protective equipment (PPE), helping cities and countries better cope with the shortages and international supply chain issues during the first lockdown.  

CBS has followed this process closely as it is currently a partner in the EU-funded iPRODUCE project. The project started in January 2020 focusing on developing a novel social manufacturing platform that embraces manufacturing companies in the consumer goods sector. In short, the project is committed to bringing closer manufacturers, makers and consumer communities (MMCs) at the local level; to engage them into joint co-creation challenges for the manufacturing of new consumer products and the introduction of novel engineering and production (eco)systems; to fuse practices, methods and tools that both makers and manufacturing companies (SMEs specifically) are employing.

The project, as an innovation action (IA), has formed clusters in six locations, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain composed of Fablabs, makerspaces and research institutions. These clusters are defined as Collaborative Manufacturing Demonstration Facilities (cMDFs). In Denmark, CBS is the research institution working closely together with betaFACTORY forming the DK-cMDF.

In the context of this project, social manufacturing can be described as a primary ground to democratise innovation.

The ‘Do it yourself’ (DIY) movement, assisted by makerspaces and fablabs, offers opportunities for real exchange towards solutions to inform the development of many products through an open platform, to not only support, but also to expand these processes and broaden their reach across society. 

During the onset of the pandemic, when the project was only in its third month, while project activities required adjustments and re-planning, the fablabs and makerspaces in the distinct locations became important resources for local manufacturing facilities, closing a gap of problems related to international supply chain production and distribution regarding protective medical gear.

The open source community’s umbrella became a key local asset in bridging various groups and bringing makers together towards one goal – manufacturing products that would help save lives.

Spain, which was hit hard by the pandemic early on, spearheaded this movement in Europe. Already in March 2020, DIY groups organised themselves online (primarily WhatsApp and Telegram), sharing questions and designs through these social media platforms. Doctors and other types of stakeholders also joined some of these groups, providing expert information. They shared requests, talked together and developed designs and models, which were then 3D printed widely across in various makerspaces, sparking a local production and distribution supply chain. The distribution, which was initially done by volunteers, was carried out by taxi drivers and local police in an extraordinary mode of collaboration during the most extreme lockdown phases. By June 2020, over one million face shields had been produced and distributed across Spain [1].  

The Spanish face shield design, under the creative commons licence, was picked up by makers everywhere, including in Denmark, where the Facebook group ‘DK Makers mod Corona’ (DK Makers against Corona) was quick to adapt the design to specific Danish regulations and started locally producing the face shields during the first Danish lockdown. Over 63000 face shields were produced and distributed across the country by July 2020 and the Facebook group grew from 50 to over 2500 members during the same period.

In both cases, what stands out is the fact that the expertise, manufacturing capability and human resources are without doubt available everywhere and when a common and purposeful goal is set, fast and impactful results can be achieved.

These civic responses also bring forward questions on how society could make better use of these valuable resources for other distinct local challenges, and how we can positively disrupt mass global manufacturing towards distributed local manufacturing. As the pandemic initiatives have shown, by reorganising and setting common goals, makers and industry can bridge gaps, creating wider societal benefit that challenge the status quo and push new manufacturing opportunities that can define ‘new normals’ also for local production – taking all of it to higher and more sustainable levels in the 21st century.

iPRODUCE – “A Social Manufacturing Framework for Streamlined Multi- stakeholder Open Innovation Missions in Consumer Goods Sectors” (2020-2022) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 870037. This publication reflects only the author’s view and the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

References

[1] MAKERY, 2020. Spanish makers’ ongoing fight against COVID-19. Published by Cesar Garcia Saez.

About the Author

Isabel Fróes is a postdoc at MSC Department at Copenhagen Business School working in three EU projects (Cities-4-People, iPRODUCE and BECOOP). Isabel also has wide industry experience and has worked both as a user researcher and service design consultant for various companies in Denmark and internationally. For more detail please see her Linkedin profile.

Photo source: NC State University

Delivering and Financing Better Societies

How can cities self-finance environmental and social solutions?

By Luise Noring

Every week, more than three million people move into cities looking for places to work and live. This puts an enormous strain on cities’ finances and capacity to provide for their residents. We can no longer – if we ever could – assume that taxes will pay for growing urban populations with growing demands for public infrastructure, goods and services. We need to find new ways of delivering and financing good societies for the billions of people living and working in cities.

Therefore, the challenge is not only to find the best environmental and social solutions for cities, but also to address how these solutions can be delivered and financed. All too often, for example, brilliant climate solutions are presented, but nobody wants to take responsibility for delivering and financing them. All too often, we hear of good solutions for social preventive action and public health that are never put into action. The solutions are there. The challenge is that the business case and investment proposition are either weak or non-existent. As a result, the only one with the incentive to implement the solutions is the cash-strapped government itself.

Hopeful scholars demonstrate how investing taxpayers’ money today could prevent massive expenditure tomorrow. Yet today’s tax revenues are already accounted for to pay for schools, roads, housing, hospitals, etc. This leads me to my principal research question and mission in life:

How do we deliver and finance better societies?

All too often, the only financial solution on the table is to increase and spend tax revenue. But there is no financial innovation in increasing and spending taxes. This ‘solution’ just means that bonds are repaid with future taxes even though we know full well that, in the future, taxes will still be needed to finance schools, roads, housing, hospitals, etc. Spending future taxes today only jeopardizes future generations’ ability to finance their schools, roads, housing, hospitals, etc. The same applies to tax increment financing (TIF), which is a common practice in urban development and economic revitalisation used in the US and subsequently adapted across much of the world.

The idea behind TIF is that local governments issue bonds based on future tax revenue increases. TIF assumes that urban regeneration can be financed by bonds that are serviced and repaid by future tax revenue increases. The proceeds of the TIF bonds are thus used to stimulate economic development through investments in urban regeneration, infrastructure and other public goods. The bonds are repaid mainly through property taxes resulting from investments and development activities. What happens though when the public investments fail to increase tax revenue paid by private owners? In such cases, local governments remain obliged to repay the government- guaranteed bonds.

Conventionally, in the US, local property taxes fund elementary and secondly education, supplemented by federal and state contributions. However, when future property taxes are used to finance infrastructure, public investment capital is in effect flowing from elementary and secondly education to infrastructure and other development activities in order to secure projected tax increases.

Thus, while TIF creates new economic development opportunities in one area, such as derelict neighbourhoods, it hollows out potential future investments in other areas, such as education.

Finally, it is common in many US cities for governments to woo private investment by offering tax reductions or exemptions. This amounts to making investments today with the tax revenues of tomorrow. This is how cities acquire unfunded liabilities.

The above paints a bleak picture of future financing of good solutions for better societies. However, during my research, I have come across many sound finance mechanisms. For instance, land value capture (LVC), which is commonly used in Northern Europe. LVC bundles publicly owned land, such as former port and military areas, or areas over which the public can take ownership, such as derelict areas. Once the local government has secured land ownership, it rezones and repurposes the land.

For example, former industrial land can be repurposed for commercial and residential use. This increases land values, which enables the government to take out loans based on the increased value of the land. With renewed borrowed capital, local government can make infrastructure and other investments in the land. This again increases land values. Once the land has been properly matured, it is sold to private investors and developers, including institutional investors, such as pension funds. Revenues from land sales are used to service and repay the debts. You can read more about this model in my Copenhagen City & Port Development report.

Another solution is for local government to raise seed capital, for instance from philanthropies, pension funds and other large institutional investors that invest with long time horizons. This seed capital is used in projects as low-yield and high-risk investment capital that is capable of attracting other investments that are more high yield and low risk. Once projects have been realised, they are refinanced, and the seed capital is withdrawn and put into another project. This is a kind of project-by-project financing. You can read more about this model in my Cincinnati Development Corporation report.

This blog post has offered a snapshot of several research projects I have conducted over the years. All my works contain key enabling features for replication, which allow me to scale solutions to other cities. If you want to learn more, please visit this page or get in touch with me: lno.msc@cbs.dk.

Further Reading

Luise Noring (2019) Public asset corporation: A new vehicle for urban regeneration and infrastructure finance. Cities.

Bruns-Berentelg, J., Noring, L., & Grydehøj, A. (2020). Developing urban growth and urban quality: Entrepreneurial governance and urban redevelopment projects in Copenhagen and Hamburg. Urban Studies.

About the Author

Dr. Luise Noring is an Assistant Professor at CBS, where she also attained her Ph.D. in supply chain partnerships. Noring challenges taken-for-granted and commonsense solutions – which are only ever taken-for-granted and commonsense within their specific contexts. Part of what makes her work innovative and has assured its impact in research and practice is precisely her insistence on reaching across national and sectoral contexts, drawing experiences from a great diversity of urban systems. This has allowed Noring to identify what kinds of city solutions work best in particular contexts and how certain kinds of institutional vehicles and finance mechanisms can be adapted to diverse cities and countries.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

How the pandemic can reset cities and transform aspects of urban mobility

By Isabel Froes

Cities are hard and complex systems. With their defined policies, grids and routes, they offer limited space for experimentation, with a low threshold for any type of interference to their regular flow.  To test and prototype [1] in the urban, besides dealing with regulatory procedures, require clear indications of the positive impact those tests might bring. Thus, any change in routine flows is disruptive and not necessarily welcomed by all.

Some of these difficulties have become explicit during the processes carried out by various cities in four EU funded neighbourhood projects, Cities-4-People, Sunrise, MUV and Metamorphosis [2]. These projects have brought together citizens and other key city stakeholders to identify and co-create mobility solutions and approaches to tackling local problems. Each project has had a distinct goal, but all are part of the CIVITAS initiative focusing on ‘sustainable neighbourhood mobility planning’ and have been running since 2017, with three of them to end in 2020 and another in 2021. In the case of the Cities-4-People project, running in the cities of Hamburg, Istanbul, Oxford, Trikala and Budapest, cities, citizens and transport authorities have worked closely together to co-create and implement solutions addressing congestion, bike parking, safe and new routes to reach public transportation, and more [3].

Primarily, one of the biggest difficulties in deploying urban prototypes deals with permissions, space sharing, closing parts of or an entire street, or pavement, changing traffic routes, etc.

Even when implementing aspects citizens see as valuable and beneficial, such as bike racks, paths, during construction, these processes tend to be perceived as a nuisance. Another aspect stems from the fact that, unless it is a whole new city or neighbourhood been planned, the city, as a canvas, is never blank. Therefore, cities are constantly bound to develop solutions, which are imposed over an existing and fixed grid with very little wiggle room. All true, until March 2020.

The pandemic, through lockdowns and other movement restrictions, has changed the flow of cities almost overnight. For the first time, since the widespread city development focusing on automobiles, cities have had a chance to look at their now empty public spaces and rethink their use and purposes. These changes have forced the neighbourhood projects into a sudden halt, as people’s engagement with urban spaces has been very limited. However, while physical workspaces, shops and many businesses closed their doors, with citizens mostly at home, cities have encountered an unprecedented opportunity to rethink their streets.

In two related mobility examples, Vilnius, Lithuanian capital, the city Mayor has opened up eighteen of the city’s public spaces, free of charge, to bars and restaurants, so they can run while keeping the required social distancing [4].

In Milan [5], over the summer, the city will engage in a large-scale urban prototype, deploying 35km of temporary biking lanes and enlarged pavement areas.

While the city slowly opens up, with most employees still working from home and not commuting as much, citizens, when going out, should have enough space to keep a safe distance, while also experimenting in environmental friendly modes, such as walking and biking.

When some of the neighbourhood projects, such as Cities-4-People, resume in a few months, their cities and citizens might have changed. However, instead of considering the data that has been collected in the projects prior to the lockdown as ‘outdated’ or no longer valid, these projects can consider repurposing this data, using it as a robust baseline to be compared with post lockdown. From a mobility perspective, this ‘new normal’ might prove itself a valuable mobility asset. As people return to their streets, they can experience these known spaces in new formats encountering novel mobility patterns, where people and businesses can repopulate streets differently, reconfiguring city flows.

Furthermore, some of these temporary changes might prove to be popular and become permanent, promoting not only better mobility, but also lower pollution and improved air quality [6], indirectly helping cities leapfrog into achieving some of their sustainable development goals (SDGs). The opportunity to reset busy urban centres is rare; however, as it has occurred and continues to run with the pandemic, more cities and citizens have the unique chance to engage and exploit their cities’ canvas in new ways to seize their days.

References

[1] Implementing a temporary solution

[2] https://civitas.eu/projects/research

[3] https://cities4people.eu/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/lithuanian-capital-to-be-turned-into-vast-open-air-cafe-vilnius

[5] In Milan, the lockdown brought a city to an almost complete stand still, decreasing an endemic congestion problem by 30-75%, thus improving air quality. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/milan-seeks-to-prevent-post-crisis-return-of-traffic-pollution

[6] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-future-mobility-solutions?cid=soc-app

About the Author

Isabel Fróes is a postdoc at MSC Department at Copenhagen Business School working in two EU projects (Cities-4-People and iPRODUCE) dealing with distinct aspects of urban services and sustainability. Her latest publications deal with urban planning and co-creation based on results from the Cities-4-People project. Isabel also has wide industry experience and has worked both as a user researcher and service design consultant for various companies in Denmark and internationally. For more detail please see her Linkedin profile  

More about coronavirus pandemic on Business of Society blog:

The Coronavirus Pandemic – and the Consequentiality of Metaphors

Sustainable Development, Interrupted?

The Political Economy of the Olympics – Misconceptions about Sustainability

Supply Chain Responsibilities in a Global Pandemic

A Green and Fair COVID-19 Recovery Plan

In Movement from Tanzania to Northern Italy to Denmark

How to make food systems more resilient: Try Behavioural Food Policies

Lobbying and the virus – three trends to take note of

Photo by ?? Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

How to make food systems more resilient: Try Behavioural Food Policies

By Lucia A. Reisch

The vision of healthy and sustainable food systems that facilitate appropriate food choices by individuals is gaining momentum in practice and in the marketplace. As the single strongest lever to optimize both human health and environmental sustainability, the food choices we make matter in multiple ways – for our bodies, the environment, and the economic and social fabric of societies. Acknowledging and actively harnessing co-benefits of “win-win diets” is a major focus of current food, farm, environmental, and health policy that aims to positively influence consumer behaviour. A behavioural turn in food policy that puts individuals and their choices at center stage holds promise for manifesting the vision of healthy and sustainable food systems.

As we collectively ponder lessons learned from the coronavirus pandemic, a key aspect will be to consider how to increase resilience of societies and economies in general and food systems in particular, to better endure a crisis in the future.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) defines resilience as ‘the ability to prevent disasters and crises as well as to anticipate, absorb, accommodate or recover from them in a timely, efficient and sustainable manner. This includes protecting, restoring and improving livelihood systems in the face of threats that impact agriculture, nutrition, food security and food safety.’ [1]

Food chains today are long and globalized, and retail systems are streamlined for efficiency with just-in-time inventories, all adding to the vulnerability of systems. While the basic food provision in Europe continued during the pandemic (not least due to the availability of local food chains), cracks appeared at the retail level with shortages of staples. Admittedly, many shortages were due to stockpiling by frightened people – a behavioural factor rather than a reflection of true supply shortages. One can speculate now that if the crisis were to continue, other dependencies (for instance, on mostly Eastern European farm workers for harvesting) will become obvious.

In a healthy and sustainable food system, the products that are grown, processed, and distributed are health-supporting, safe, environmentally and climate friendly; farmers and laborers work for fair wages under decent conditions; and on the demand side, equal and easy access to affordable, healthy, and sustainable diets as well as nutrition security are provided for today’s and future generations. This sounds like a utopia but it is our future.

The EAT Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets for Sustainable Food Systems recently defined a concrete healthy reference diet that, if applied, can be provided “for an anticipated world population of nearly 10 billion people by 2050 and still stay within a safe operating space on Earth” (Willett et al. 2019).

Balanced and sustainable food systems that stay within the planetary boundaries and provide a minimum level of safety, access, and equity are doubtlessly more resilient – i.e., more robust in times of shocks and crisis – than lean, efficiency-maximizing, far-flung global supply systems. The advantages and necessity of system resilience are likely to constitute one big learning from the pandemic.

Another big learning is that consumer-citizen behaviour is much more malleable and adaptive than many policymakers (and researchers) had thought. People are able and ready to quickly change deeply ingrained habits, adopt new practices (social distancing, home cooking), and adhere to new social norms (wearing masks, hand washing) if – important qualifier – the reasons seem (scientifically) sound, are limited to a bearable time span, and are well explained by a trustworthy government.

Some governments (Sweden, e.g.) rely on voluntary action and “nudging” alone; others (Germany, e.g.) combine harsh bans, intense risk communication, and behaviourally informed policies such as warnings, framing, priming, reminders, defaults, and boosts. We don’t know yet which strategies will work best, but it has already become clear that much can be achieved by using behavioural insights, calling on the responsibility of people, giving positive feedback and reminders, and harnessing the power of (dynamic) social norms and peer pressure.

In the words of the great Danny Kahneman: good policy needs to activate both types of people’s decision-making: the quick, intuitive, emotional “System 1” and the slow, cognitive, deliberate “System 2”.

It is not a new idea that insights into the biases and heuristics, the habits and motivations of consumers can be useful to design effective policies. This is the essence of the new field of Behavioural Public Policy that constitutes these days an International Association of Behavioural Public Policy. The evidence is increasing that a behavioural approach can indeed help design better food policies. What we call Behavioural Food Policy puts people’s needs, biases, and decisions at center stage, offering a specific behavioural lens to existing (hard and soft) policies that can make them more effective. It relies on governance processes that are based on empirical, often experimental testing, learning, and adapting. Public deliberation and participation in these processes help consumer-citizens understand and eventually approve of the policies. This potential of behavioural policies to shift habits and food demand is under-utilized but growing.

This approach is echoed by the global climate change community in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) upcoming 6th Assessment Report. [2] The report identifies two major behavioural changes that substantially mitigate greenhouse gas emissions: avoiding food waste and dietary shifts to plant-based nutrition. As to the former, simple behaviour such as meal planning and creative use of leftovers can help reduce food waste on the individual level; retail can adjust its marketing, and regulators can improve the handling of expiration labels and best-before dates. Regarding the latter, reducing (mainly ruminant) meat consumption and substituting animal protein with field-grown protein are seen as major steps. A diet light in meat is better for one’s health, leads to greater animal welfare, helps reduce food-borne diseases and food crisis, and produces less greenhouse gas emissions. Because individual choices are the basis of any healthy and sustainable food system, understanding and influencing consumer behaviour is a promising route to achieving sustainability, resilience, and healthfulness of our food systems and society generally.

References

[1] http://www.fao.org/emergencies/how-we-work/resilience/en/.

[2] The author is a contributing author to this IPCC AR6 chapter.

About the author

Lucia A. Reisch is Professor of consumer behaviour and consumer policy at the Department of Management, Society and Communication (MSC) within the CBS Sustainability. Her research focuses on behavioural economics, behavioural public policy, sustainable consumption (in particular, energy, food and health, active mobility and fashion), intercultural consumer behaviour, consumers and digitization, as well as consumer policy.

More about coronavirus pandemic on Business of Society blog:

The Coronavirus Pandemic – and the Consequentiality of Metaphors

Sustainable Development, Interrupted?

The Political Economy of the Olympics – Misconceptions about Sustainability

Supply Chain Responsibilities in a Global Pandemic

A Green and Fair COVID-19 Recovery Plan

In Movement from Tanzania to Northern Italy to Denmark

Photo by Chad Stembridge on Unsplash

The Political Economy of the Olympics – Misconceptions about Sustainability

By Faith Hatani

In the midst of the global coronavirus crisis, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Japanese government finally decided last month to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Olympics until next year. The general public across the world may have different views on the Olympics – positive and negative, or simply indifference. But with regard to the Tokyo Games, there is a fair reason for not just postponing them but reconsidering their relevance and preferably cancelling them altogether. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has underscored the long-standing controversies surrounding the Tokyo Olympics, and it is indeed sustainability that is at stake.

Economic problems in the host country

A tag line that Tokyo, the host city of the 2020 Olympics, has been using is “Recovery Olympics” for a sustainable future. The “recovery” is primarily referring to the recovery from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the ensuing nuclear disaster in Fukushima, a city in northern Japan. When Tokyo was successful in its bid to host the Games, it estimated that the market effect of the Olympics and Paralympics would be more than JPY 32 trillion in total, which would be a huge boost to Japan’s shrinking economy. Clinging on to this rather optimistic figure, the IOC and the host government were reluctant to make any change to the original schedule in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, and their attitude was criticised as “wildly irresponsible” (Boykoff, 2020).

Besides the cost-benefit analysis of the Tokyo Games, it should be noted that, as of March 2020, nine years after the Fukushima disaster, approximately 48,000 people were still living in evacuation zones in Japan. Despite this, a huge amount of money has been spent on constructing new facilities for the Olympics, rather than aiming to reconstruct “sustainable cities and communities” (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11) in the disaster-hit northern city. Meanwhile, the Tokyo Olympics has been the most over-budgeted Games ever, because of Tokyo’s lax policy.

Postponing the Olympics will entail an extended preparation/maintenance period for another year amid uncertainty, which is likely to impose an additional tax burden on citizens. It is highly questionable whether the host government has appropriately prioritised key issues and allocated resources accordingly.

Environmental issues: Value chains in the global sports industry 

The Olympics is big business, involving not only elite athletes, but also a large number of stakeholders such as sponsors, media, providers of various products, and spectators. A mass of people moves across borders and within the host country, consuming a great number of goods in just a few weeks. The huge amount of greenhouse gases and waste that each Olympic Games generates has been the subject of continuing international debate. These are also the problem areas addressed by SDGs 12 and 13.

On the other hand, the United Nations recognises that sport can be an enabler of sustainable development (UN General Assembly, 2018). If the host is committed to the SDGs, and stakeholders and resource-rich companies/countries collaborate to implement environmentally friendly technologies and practices, the Olympics could be a showcase of new ideas to facilitate sustainability. In this regard, the Organising Committee of the Tokyo Games has promoted several sustainability concepts and plans. Nevertheless, a group of non-governmental organisations has raised a question concerning Tokyo’s approach (Heineken, 2019). They reported that a huge new national stadium for the 2020 Games was built by cutting down trees in Indonesia and Malaysia, thereby damaging these countries’ efforts to preserve their rainforests (SDG 15).

When it comes to a mega sporting event such as the Olympics, we tend to, somewhat naively, pay attention to the downstream, in which big brands, celebrities, impressive new technologies and goods to consume are all visible, and we are often ignorant of what is happening in the upstream.

If the upstream of the whole value chain is neglected and sustainability is used (or misused) as just a fancy concept, while economic actors act irresponsibly, the SDGs will never materialise.

Health concerns: Summer heat as usual, and now Covid-19

Since Tokyo was selected as the host city for the 2020 Olympics, persistent health concerns have been raised. One of the almost inevitable problems in Tokyo is, in fact, a hot summer, which Weather Atlas describes as “oppressive humidity and extremely high temperatures”. Indeed, many people actually suffer illness each year due to the summer heat in Japan; in 2019 alone, more than 70,000 people were admitted to hospital due to hyperthermia.

Although Tokyo insists that the Olympic venues will be closely monitored with adequate safety measures, it is unclear how this can be guaranteed, not just for the athletes but also for the volunteers and spectators in the different locations.

Now, a new and bigger concern certainly involves Covid-19. To date (as of mid-April 2020), the number of confirmed cases in Japan has been significantly lower than the other G7 nations as well as neighbouring Asian countries. However, medical experts and other countries are sceptical, questioning whether Japan may be overly restricting coronavirus testing in order to maintain its safe image for the sake of the Olympics. Of course, the slow testing could be due to other factors such as the limited availability of testing kits, which has also been a problem for other countries. Nonetheless, the root cause of the concern is the slow response of the authorities in taking the necessary action, because this would trigger an explosion of infection cases as we have witnessed in other countries.

Although Tokyo eventually declared a state of emergency on 7 April, this was a few weeks later than the lockdowns enforced by many major countries, and two months after a coronavirus outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship anchored offshore in Yokohama, just 30 km from Tokyo. Tokyo’s lenient approach casts doubt on its capability of dealing with communicable diseases when a rapid response is crucial (SDG 3). 

The point is not to abolish all future Olympic Games as this global sporting event can be an important platform for athletes, and potentially a contributor to peace (SDG 16), or at least a symbol of it. However, the Tokyo Olympics is missing the meaning behind sustainability in many ways. Furthermore, amongst other factors, it is also ill-timed. The world is now facing a serious challenge on a global scale.

One clear message that the coronavirus pandemic has taught us is that we may be vulnerable wherever we are – even in a wealthy country – and that we all have a responsibility to strive for sustainability.

In this context, financial resources should be invested in essential products and vaccine research to tackle Covid-19, and human resources should be allocated to immediate needs to sustain local societies. In short, get the priorities right. Then, strong global partnerships and cooperation (SDG 17) will hopefully facilitate our efforts and achieve a more meaningful positive outcome.

About the author

Faith Hatani is Associate Professor at the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at Copenhagen Business School. Her research interests reside in the role of international business in sustainable economic development, focusing on responsible management of value chains and institutional constraints in different industries and countries.

References

Boykoff, J. (2020) Cancel. The. Olympics. The New York Times.

Heineken, H. (2019) Olympic timber scandal. The Understory.

UN General Assembly (2018) Sport for development and peace

Photo by hitsujiotoko_xx

Read more about sustainability and Covid-19:

Sustainable Development, Interrupted?


Towards a Realization of Sustainability Ambitions?

By Lars Thøger Christensen

Governments are increasingly being sued by citizens and NGOs for not living up to their sustainability ambitions.

Recently, for example, three German farmers along with Greenpeace arraigned Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government for failing to achieve its ambition to reduce Germany’s CO2 emission by 40 percent in 2020, as measured from 1990. Already last year, the government acknowledged that it would not be able to meet its goal. It expects to achieve a 32 percent reduction. The consequences for the farmers, the complainants argue, are dire in terms of long periods of drought and other extreme weather conditions that threaten to destroy their livelihood.

In other parts of the world – including USA, Peru, Colombia and Fiji – similar cases and complaints are arising. It is difficult not to sympathize with these complaints and their underlying concern for our shared planet.

>>It was therefore remarkable that the administrative court in Berlin rejected what was the first climate complaint against the German government.<<

The complainants, the court argued, have no basis for demanding a specific set of actions from the government whose climate protection program 2020 was described as a “political aspiration”. According to German media, the judge said that society needs to respect the executive power’s discretion and room for maneuvering. Understandably, this ruling has spawned lots of criticism.

Governments are currently not legally required to live up to their sustainability aspirations.

This case calls on us to discuss what it takes to make sure that sustainability aspirations are actually being fulfilled by governments as well as by corporations. First, however, we need to consider whether a different decision by the German court – a decision that backed the claims by the farmers and Greenpeace – would have ensured a faster and more certain goal fulfillment. In a short-term perspective, that is quite likely. Although such ruling probably would have been appealed, it would at the same time have applied immense pressure on the government to launch more intense climate initiatives here and now. The more wide-ranging effects of such ruling, however, might not have been in the interest of the sustainability agenda. 

What happens if governments and corporations are legally forced to walk their talk?

Without exonerating empty sustainability talk and lack of sufficient climate initiatives, it is important to acknowledge that governmental and corporate aspirations serve multiple functions in changing and improving existing practices. While sustainability aspirations may be used to impress and seduce voters and consumers, something that is often the case, they are simultaneously likely to shape expectations and mobilize stakeholders to apply pressure for action.

Here, the level of optimal pressure is crucial. If governments and corporations know that unfulfilled promises and aspirations will be met with damaging court cases that support their complainants, they will be less likely to announce ambitious goals, and more inclined to articulate ideals that they already, or almost already, live up to. In such cases, changes may happen slower than society may desire.

>>Conversely, lack of stakeholder pressure is likely to result in “aspirational inflation” or overbidding, thereby reducing the performative power of aspirational talk to instigate changes.<<

Under which conditions should we expect governments and corporations to live up to their own aspirations?

Obviously, the aspirations in question need to engage with salient social, political or environmental issues in order to attract external attention and interest. Most sustainability aspirations are likely to fulfill that criterion. 

At the same time, aspirations need to be bold and challenging in order to mobilize conflicting opinions and critical comments.

Without visionary idea(l)s and without critical attention and interest from stakeholders, aspirations are likely to be soon forgotten or perhaps ignored. Lofty organizational aspirations define a collective horizon of excellence that empowers stakeholders – internal as well as external – to expect and demand better practices. To ensure that the aspirations are taken seriously by all parties, they simultaneously need to be announced in public media of high status. Public announcement communicates the formal status of the ambitions to external audiences but simultaneously signals their authority and truth-value to organizational members. Hereby, they have the potential to stimulate both internal and external involvement and activism. Without such conditions, the German climate protection program 2020 might not even have reached 32 percent of CO2 reduction.

Aspirations need to be visionary, bold and public to mobilize pressure for action.

Obviously, the emphasis on consistency between words and action is important in forcing organizations to take their own words seriously. At the same time, such emphasis might breed a growing fear of criticism – a fear that can lead organizations to restrain their announcement of ambitions in the hope of escaping public attention and scrutiny. This risk is important to keep in mind when deciding how to apply pressure on governments and organizations to honor their own words.

Suggestions for further readings:

Christensen, L.T., Morsing, M., & Thyssen, O. (2013). CSR as aspirational talk. Organization, 20(3), 372-393.

Font, X., Elgammal, I., & Lamond, I. (2017). Greenhushing: the deliberate under communicating of sustainability practices by tourism businesses. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(7), 1007-1023.

Girschik, V. (2018). Shared responsibility for societal problems: The role of internal activists in reframing corporate responsibility, Business & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650318789867

Haack, P., Schoeneborn. D., & Wickert, C. (2012). Talking the talk, moral entrapment, creeping commitment? Exploring narrative dynamics in corporate responsibility standardization. Organization Studies, 33(5-6), 815-845.

Kim, E-H., & Lyon, T. P. (2014). Greenwash vs. brownwash: Exaggeration and undue modesty in corporate sustainability disclosure. Organization Science, 26(3), 705-723.

About the Author

Lars Thøger Christensen is Professor of Communication and Organization at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

Photo by Ahmed Bibi on Unsplash

The Academic Smarts in the Smart City

By Lara Anne Hale.

Smart Cities 101

Last week I had the pleasure of being one of eight students to join the University of Aalborg course “Smart Cities – Technologies and Institutions” led by Professor Anders Henten and Associate Professor Reza Tadayoni. I applied for this course in May 2018, and then promptly forgot about it again. I can’t even find any remnants of a confirmation in my mailbox; and I’m only able to figure out when I had actually applied because of a Facebook chat that took place around it.

Yet, when the acceptance pinged into the mail lineup a few weeks ago, I made sure to cancel all previous obligations to open up the time for this three-day course. This is because – although it may not be obvious – there is a shortage of educational opportunities concerning what a smart city is, who is involved, how they are working to put the pieces together, when we can realistically transition, and why this even makes sense to pursue.

There are a number of reasons for this, not least of all because most of the projects bringing forth the Internet of Things (IoT) that smart cities are founded on, are detailed somewhere between (occasionally accessible) engineering papers, such as [1], and the (overly simplified) ‘government-slash-consultancy’ reports, such as [2] and [3]. Which, while comforting to know governments are investing in this kind of research, also create discomfort over who might have the language and knowledge with which to discuss, or even influence, smart cities development.

This brings me to one of the other major reasons for the lack of academic representation: smart cities involve such a conglomeration of disciplines, skills, languages, and theories that it would seem almost impossible to embody its understandings in one scholar. And it could be seen in our group: the teachers were from political economics and engineering; and the students represented organizational studies (myself), civil engineering, architecture, IT, anthropology, and more. It reminded me of a course I took in my bachelor studies “Bioethics of the 21st Century”, requiring both a Professor of Microbiology and a Professor of Philosophy and constituted of seemingly disparate discourses merging in the reality of our bioethics challenges.

From Science Fiction to Society

At that time, anyone who believed that bioethics was unnecessary needed only to look at the mass abuse of antibiotics or the explorations into stem-cell research. And anyone who now believes that the smart city is a feature of the future had better take a look around at the present. Just consider the kind of political affiliation conclusions (otherwise known as “profiling”) that can be extrapolated from Twitter data [4]. Even WIRED Magazine recently released an article detailing how governments are bringing together the sophistication of interconnectivity and the maturation of artificial intelligence (AI). This, paired with the overly optimistic intentions for social media and the willful blindness of the West’s superpowers, could result in a new-found political war over the control of not just data, but also the city- (even nation- or internation-) wide imposition of government, industrial, and freedom controls [5]. As they call it, the “AI Cold War”.

More on the day-to-day practical side of things, the devices primed to share data to the bigger cloud for smart city processing start making themselves cozy on our shelves, sockets, and even wrists. Postscapes, an organization specializing in organizational efficiency and waste reduction through IoT and machine-learning technologies, identifies the top 2018 IoT devices as centering around convenience (e.g. smart locks, smart home hubs) and energy savings (e.g. smart thermostats, smart lights) [6]. Embedded in the banality of these literal black boxes are the governance and democratic implications set forth in the aforementioned articles; but it is the nature of technology to develop towards ease-of-use, and eventually, invisibility. Yet, where there is change, there is also opportunity.

Organizational Smarts

Certainly, building organizations are keenly aware that digitization and smart buildings are no longer a negligible aspect of the business. Rather, there is the question of how they should engage with these changes, and most importantly, how this novel connection with end-users (through the little black boxes) might change (or – more cautiously – improve) the way they do business.
One of the most prominent ways such a consideration is voiced is in the terminology of nudging, referring to a “relatively subtle policy shift that encourages people to make decisions that are in their broad self-interest” [7]; the catch being that in a smart city, it is not the policy that does the encouraging, but the technology, be it technological infrastructure, application design, or signals from devices.

For example, simply communicating electricity consumption compared to one’s neighbours changes people’s use of electricity (for better, or for worse) [8]. And so, building organizations have embarked upon a journey to apply understandings of how people behave, how smart buildings can connect with behaviour, and how it makes good business sense to digitize buildings; but they cannot do it alone. Half of the organizational smarts are about the business ecosystems and partnerships being formed in order to bring smart spaces to reality.

And despite having my hands full examining this scale of organizational work, it’s been enlightening to go from the organizational perspective on the building level (as I research about smart buildings and healthy indoor climate) to the city level. Previously I would have thought of this as being more relevant for those working with mobility or utilities; but after this course I better understand that the playing field for intention, business, and power in the communication technologies and protocols that enable smart cities (and also smart buildings) is much broader and nuanced than I had previously understood. Just learning about the communication technology forms was enough to blow this little biologist-environmentalist-organizational-sociologist’s mind. Even knowing their names and relative differences [9], I’m still not sure how this will meet expectations of a better world.

The 5Gs and 5Ds of Smart

One thing is for sure, standards matter, and standards will be made. Before this course, I had never even heard of 5G, and yet the European Commission identifies it as “the most critical building block of our digital society in the next decade” [10]. The Commission has been polishing the EU standards for 5G since 2016 [11] and has earmarked €700 million in funding, with initial rollouts planned for 2018 and followed by another, broader wave in 2020.

The concept of 5G extends well beyond an acceleration of mobile service into a virtual “stacking” of data incoming from the other communication technology forms (such as WiFi and LPWAN) in order to create a synergetic cloud-network, from which it would (hypothetically) be possible to analyze and improve upon the city system (otherwise known as us, our lives, and our environment). From what I understand, the most part of such an analysis is planned to be done by AI.

Okay, so the little black boxes track and communicate our data over these various communication systems, which are compiled into the 5G cloud, where AI interprets the Big Data into meaningful action, executed again, by the little black boxes. No wonder experts are writing articles about an eminent AI Cold War. Luckily “privacy” is not the last word in the sentence. Rather, researchers are working hard to outline what types of privacy can be protected in the various angles of the smart city. Already in 2013, Martínez-Ballesté et al. identified the 5D (five dimensions) of smart city privacy as: identity privacy, query privacy, location privacy, footprint privacy, and owner privacy [12].

The 5 dimensions of smart city privacy:

identity, query, location, footprint and owner privacy.

Martínez-Ballesté et al.

These authors also point to the necessity for further security efforts within digital infrastructures and the transportation of data; a finger which has trouble settling its point due to the vast number of parties involved in bringing smart cities to life. Which one of these organizations is responsible for guaranteeing security? And is this a public or a private organizational responsibility?

Academic Smarts

No, those were not rhetorical questions. They were academic ones. And in discussing the 5G and the 5D, I’m reminded of another 5D. During the 6th Active House Symposium workshop “Digital Design Meets Digital Use: Active House principles in BIM and smart buildings” that I co-organized with PhD fellow Federica Brunone, Federica highlighted that Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology enables planning for the built environment beyond the Height, Width, and Depth; that the 5D adds Time and Sustainability. I suppose that the latter of these five, Sustainability, is the one that we are still struggling to incorporate into the standardized practices of life.

Building Information Modeling technology enables planning for another 5D:

Height, Width, Depth, Time and Sustainability.

Although I’ve been told during my research that Sustainability was the past, and Smart is the future, I have to question if that conclusion is not a dismissal driven by the challenges that Sustainability poses to Smart. How can we be smart without being sustainable? And better yet, if we can study, research, teach, practice, policy-make, and live in a sustainable way, won’t that pave the way for smart cities? Those were not academic questions. I think you know the answer.

References

  1. Maha Saadeh, Azzam Sleit, Khair Eddin Sabri, and Wesam Almobaideen. (2018). Hierarchical architecture and protocol for mobile object authentication in the context of IoT smart cities, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 121: 1-19.
  2. Danish Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs. (2015). Tomorrow’s Cities are Digital and Human – Smart City methods: from ideas to action. Anders Nørskov, Kristoffer Nilaus Olsen, Lukas Beraki, and CEDI (Eds.). The Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs, Denmark 2015. ISBN: 978-87-7134-136-2. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://erhvervsstyrelsen.dk/sites/default/files/smart_city_2015_english_0.pdf
  3. Doody, L., Walt, N., Dimireva, I., and Nørskov, A. (2016). Growing Smart Cities in Denmark: Digital Technology for Urban Improvement and National Prosperity. Arup and CEDI, Denmark 2016. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: http://um.dk/da/nyheder-fra-udenrigsministeriet/newsdisplaypage/~/media/UM/Markedsinformation%20Publications/Growing_Smart_Cities_in_Denmark.pdf
  4. Mathias, C., Storey, S., and Hooper, A. (2016). We the Tweeple. Huffington Post, 19 October 2016. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2016/we-the-tweeple
  5. Thompson, N. and Bremmer, I. (2018). The AI Cold War that Threatens Us All. WIRED Magazine, 23 October 2018. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-cold-war-china-could-doom-us-all/
  6. Postscapes. (2018). IoT Devices and Products. Retrieved 18 November 2018 from: https://www.postscapes.com/internet-of-things-award/winners/
  7. Chu, B. (2017). What is ‘nudge theory’ and why should we care? Explaining Richard Thaler’s Nobel economics prize-winning concept: How subtle policy shifts can be in everyone’s best interest. Independent, 9 October 2017. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/nudge-theory-richard-thaler-meaning-explanation-what-is-it-nobel-economics-prize-winner-2017-a7990461.html
  8. Holmes, B. (2018). Nudging grows up (and now has a government job). Knowable Magazine, 1 February 2018. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2018/nudging-grows-and-now-has-government-job
  9. Ledger, D. (2016). Making sense of the myriad of IoT standards and protocols. Medium Corportation, 10 June 2016. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://medium.com/@dledge/making-sense-of-the-myriad-of-iot-standards-and-protocols-88dc4792ba1f
  10. The European Commission. (2018). Digital Single Market: Towards 5G. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/towards-5g
  11. The European Commission. (2018). Digital Single Market: Research and Standards. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/research-standards
  12. Martínez-Ballesté, A., Pérez-Martínez, P.A., and Solanas, A. (2013). The Pursuit of Citizens’ Privacy: A Privacy-Aware Smart City Is Possible. IEEE Communications Magazine, June 2013. Accessed 18 November 2018 from: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6525606/

Author

Lara Anne Hale is an industrial postdoc fellow with VELUX and Copenhagen Business School’s Governing Responsible Business World Class Research Environment. The 3-year project is part of Realdania’s Smart Buildings & Cities cluster within BLOXHUB’s Science Forum. It builds upon her PhD work on experimental standards for sustainable building to look at the business model innovation process in organizations’ adaptation to the smart building business. Follow her on Twitter.

Photo by Kristian Egelund on Unsplash.