17 Stakeholders’ Influence Towards Sustainability Transition …
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driven by sustainable value creation if they are able to incorporate long-term changes
in their strategic operations and take calculated risks along the transition process.
17.5 Discussion
The MLP has proven to be a useful framework in this empirical research to understand
how radical innovations can create windows of opportunities and break through
niches to influence the incumbent firms within regimes to adopt them. Although it is a
risky proposition to draw on conclusions based on a single case study, different actors
who are related to or could benefit from the results were included in the research,
giving rise to a rich data set to formulate the results. In the context of the textile
industrial domain, the paper has made two contributions to sustainability transitions.
The first contribution was to incorporate the complex and dynamic interactions of
the different actors to conceptualise successful sustainability transitions. The barriers
identified from these different sources resulted in the second contribution: a tactical
framework that can enable textile industries to be more sustainable through green
innovation implementation. Realistically, the water-free dyeing technology cannot
alter the processes of the entire dyeing industry. This is because some applications
require dyeing of the fibres at early stages of production (dope dyeing of yarns
for example) or applications where volumes of production are very high. However,
there is a large potential for this technology in the future. The costs of this radical
technology will reduce through economies of scale if products in other areas of
application (as mentioned in Sect. 2.3) are produced in large quantities.
The study focused on the textile industry in the EU, but the results could also be
applicable in other countries as it is assumed that similar barriers to sustainability
transition exist there as well, with different regulations and policies putting pressure
on the incumbents.
It is noteworthy to mention that technology cannot be the only enabler to address
the negative impacts of textile industries. Sustainability transitions can only be
successful if the technological changes are communicated and accepted by the
different encompassing stakeholders of this industrial structure who have different
values and priorities in their own agendas, by allowing transparent collaborations to
bring about mutual benefits.
17.6 Conclusions
The results from this research enabled the formulation of a framework to address the
increasing number of sustainability problems such as regulations, costs, technology
maturity levels and highly structured organizational processes associated within the
regimes of the textile industry domain.
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driven by sustainable value creation if they are able to incorporate long-term changes
in their strategic operations and take calculated risks along the transition process.
17.5 Discussion
The MLP has proven to be a useful framework in this empirical research to understand
how radical innovations can create windows of opportunities and break through
niches to influence the incumbent firms within regimes to adopt them. Although it is a
risky proposition to draw on conclusions based on a single case study, different actors
who are related to or could benefit from the results were included in the research,
giving rise to a rich data set to formulate the results. In the context of the textile
industrial domain, the paper has made two contributions to sustainability transitions.
The first contribution was to incorporate the complex and dynamic interactions of
the different actors to conceptualise successful sustainability transitions. The barriers
identified from these different sources resulted in the second contribution: a tactical
framework that can enable textile industries to be more sustainable through green
innovation implementation. Realistically, the water-free dyeing technology cannot
alter the processes of the entire dyeing industry. This is because some applications
require dyeing of the fibres at early stages of production (dope dyeing of yarns
for example) or applications where volumes of production are very high. However,
there is a large potential for this technology in the future. The costs of this radical
technology will reduce through economies of scale if products in other areas of
application (as mentioned in Sect. 2.3) are produced in large quantities.
The study focused on the textile industry in the EU, but the results could also be
applicable in other countries as it is assumed that similar barriers to sustainability
transition exist there as well, with different regulations and policies putting pressure
on the incumbents.
It is noteworthy to mention that technology cannot be the only enabler to address
the negative impacts of textile industries. Sustainability transitions can only be
successful if the technological changes are communicated and accepted by the
different encompassing stakeholders of this industrial structure who have different
values and priorities in their own agendas, by allowing transparent collaborations to
bring about mutual benefits.
17.6 Conclusions
The results from this research enabled the formulation of a framework to address the
increasing number of sustainability problems such as regulations, costs, technology
maturity levels and highly structured organizational processes associated within the
regimes of the textile industry domain.