مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد اکتشاف رویکردهای شهر هوشمند توسط شرکت های ICT – الزویر 2018

Introduction

In addressing persistent environmental sustainability issues in society, the international diffusion of technologies which enable resourceintensive economic activities to become more efficient is a central factor (Herring, 2006; Herring and Sorrell, 2009). A substantial part of these activities is taking place in centres of urban agglomeration. According to UN (2016) figures, approximately 4 billion people (54% of the world’s population) live in cities and metropolitan areas, with 1.7 billion people living in cities with at least 1 million inhabitants. Given that cities account for approximately 60% to 80% of energy consumption and carbon emissions (UNEP, 2011), and that further urbanization is expected to take place in the decades to come, mitigating environmental sustainability issues related to energy, mobility, and water and waste management in cities is a major challenge. City governments, particularly of capital cities and other large urban areas, have increasingly started to address issues related to environmental sustainability and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the last decade (Bulkeley, 2010; Hodson and Marvin, 2009). As part of the increasing attention to the geography of sustainability transitions (Bridge et al., 2013; Coenen et al., 2012; Hansen and Coenen, 2015; Smith et al., 2010; Truffer and Coenen, 2012), cities have recently received attention as geographic contexts to address sustainability issues (Bulkeley et al., 2010; Geels, 2011; Hodson and Marvin, 2010; Nevens et al., 2013; Nevens and Roorda, 2014; Simmons et al., 2018). This stream of research has highlighted the need to examine responses of different types of actors in transition processes towards more sustainable modes of production and consumption in society (Farla et al., 2012; Markard et al., 2012). However, while the importance of firms in this regard has been emphasized as well (e.g. Geels, 2014), specific studies on the strategic approaches of ‘firms-inindustries’ in this realm are lacking, which is where insights from the business literature and concomitant conceptualizations can add value. This study aims to provide such a contribution by examining strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in the emergence and spread of ‘smart city technologies’ for resource-efficiency in cities. We embed our analysis in international business research, a field in which the geography of internationalization strategies is becoming a central theme within the debate on globalization versus localization of MNEs (Beugelsdijk and Mudambi, 2013; Rugman and Verbeke, 2004; Verbeke and Asmussen, 2016). However, as will be further explained below, the subnational level has been underexposed, although attention for especially the concept of so-called ‘global cities’ (cf. Sassen, 2000, 2005) has recently emerged for explaining the geographic dispersion of firm activities in host environments (Goerzen et al., 2013; Mehlsen and Wernicke, 2016). Conceptually, this paper thus seeks to bridge the gap between geography/regional studies and international business research, while it empirically contributes a missing sustainability dimension in studies on MNEs and cities, and adds an actor-oriented perspective to the sustainability transitions literature. More specifically, we focus on ‘smart’ cities which, as part of the growing interest in the potential of cities in addressing persistent sustainability issues, are increasingly becoming a ubiquitous phenomenon globally.