Sustainability
has become a buzzword in academia as well as policymaking circles these days due to visible influences of climate change on daily life (e.g., Arslan et al.,
2021; Barber,
2021; Heikkurinen & Ruuska,
2021) along with the recognition that social sustainability
lies at the core of achieving the UN sustainable development
goals (Baldwin & King,
2018; Ranjabari et al.,
2021). Scholars have started to include sustainability
principles in their research in various fields in response to growing sustainability concerns as well as funding agency requirements. Consequently, the number of publications focusing on various aspects of sustainability
in different industries, national contexts
, and organizational settings has increased. In parallel, firms have also increasingly started to see sustainability not as an additional cost, but also as a business opportunity
.
Elkington’s (
1997) environmental, social, and economic approaches toward sustainability
is often referred to as the triple bottom line (TBL). To manage the interdependence, the demands stemming from the three perspectives should not be compromised but balanced. Economic sustainability
aims to secure profitability and liquidity; social sustainability
aims to contribute to human and social capital; and environmental sustainability favors the consumption of reproducible resources (Khan et al.,
2021).
In recent discussions, the term resilience
has started to emerge as connected with sustainability
, albeit without clarity regarding the difference between the two. The extant literature views resilience
and sustainability
either as: (1) independent and separate; (2) overlapping or complementary; or (3) a component of the other (Marchese et al.,
2018). Resilience
refers to the ability of an entity or system to return to a normal condition after disruption—being a measure of a system’s ability to absorb continuous and unpredictable change and continue to function (Hosseini et al.,
2016; Pregenzer,
2011). Thus, the term value can be found at the hearth of both sustainability and resilience
, i.e., to identify, create, convey, deliver, and capture, but also protect and sustain long-term value, whether economic, environmental, or social (Liu et al.,
2021).
Sustainability, Innovation, and Disruption
In the context
of sustainability
, there is an increasing recognition among management scholars that understanding the transition toward environmental and social sustainability is vital despite attractive slogans. If the actual sustainability transition
process is not understood and managed well, achieving sustainable development
-related goals will be harder (Bai et al.,
2009; Geels,
2011; Heikkurinen & Ruuska,
2021; Williams & Robinson,
2020). This sustainability transition
is highly linked to economic sustainability
, which has limited the actions on environmental and social sustainability
. In this context
of the sustainability transition
, the role of disruptive innovations
has emerged as critical in recent years because these disruptive innovations
demand socio-technical change at multiple levels (Heikkurinen & Ruuska,
2021; Park et al.,
2021); thereby bringing the transition element to the forefront of the debate (e.g., Bai et al.,
2009; Brauch et al.,
2016; Geels,
2011,
2019; Kivimaa et al.,
2021). This sustainability transition
approach is different from many traditional sustainability
focused studies, which either focus on a micro-context
(firm level sustainability initiatives) or macro-level (change toward sustainability in industries and countries), where the process of this transition does not usually get the due attention.
The sustainability transition
has primarily been studied in the context
of innovation
in the energy sector due to its’ visible linkages with environmental degradation (e.g., Bogdanov et al.,
2021; Brauch et al.,
2016; Kivimaa et al.,
2021). However, calls have been made by scholars to apply a wider approach to studying sustainability transition
in relation to innovations
(disruptive innovations
) in different industries, national contexts
, and organizational settings (e.g., Rohe & Chlebna,
2022; van der Loos et al.,
2020,
2022). At the same time, the other critical element of the sustainability transition
associated with social sustainability
is even less studied, and most research in the larger field of management has focused on organizational responsibilities and policy initiatives leading to social sustainability
, so far (e.g., Hutchins & Sutherland,
2008; Amrutha & Geeta,
2020; Ranjbari et al.,
2021). A review of the prior literature further reveals that the potential of disruptive innovations
in the transition toward social sustainability
is rarely studied; a visible gap that our chapter aims to fill is the potential of 6G
mobile telecommunications technology.
6G
systems have a high potential to contribute to both environmental and social sustainability
while ensuring economic sustainability, and this has been established by several studies published in recent years (e.g., Matinmikko-Blue et al.,
2020; Matinmikko-Blue et al.,
2021; Ojutkangas et al.,
2022). However, as 6G
is still a future
technology in the vision
and framework development phase, we still lack knowledge of how it can potentially contribute to the sustainability transition
on environmental, economic, and social levels. Prior work has linked 6G
with the UN SDGs (Matinmikko-Blue et al.,
2020; Ojutkangas et al.,
2022) and the triple bottom line of sustainability
(Matinmikko-Blue et al.,
2021,
2022) and identified several research topics for further study by the research community
including environmental, economic, and social perspectives.
Sustainability
considerations of existing mobile communication
systems have primarily focused on environmental sustainability
aiming at minimizing energy consumption and maximizing resource efficiency including energy efficiency (Zhang et al.,
2016). The role of mobile communication
is seen as important in the sustainability transition
of society at large (Wu et al.,
2018), but this development should not occur at the expense of increasing the ICT
sector’s own sustainability
burden. Most recently, sustainability
has become an important design criterion for 6G
, (ITU-R
,
2022; Matinmikko-Blue et al.,
2020), while opening the door for defining a new set of requirements on mobile communications
stemming from the sustainability transition
.
Aims of the Chapter
The current chapter aims to address the sustainability transition
and 6G
interlinkage conceptually along with substantiating the discussion with some practical examples, using the most prominent approach used in transition studies, i.e., a multi-level perspective
(MLP) (Geels,
2002,
2011,
2019,
2020; Rip & Kemp,
1998), which combines ideas from innovation
studies, sociology, evolutionary economics, and institutional theory. The core argument of MLP
is that transition is a result of a dynamic process at three different levels including: (1) niches, which are the core premises where the radical innovations
are developed; (2) socio-technical regimes, representing institutional drivers toward the change; and (3) the exogenous socio-technical landscape of the larger society. By establishing the link between 6G
and the sustainability transition
including environmental, economic, and social perspectives using the MLP
lens, our chapter offers two critical contributions to the extant 6G
, sustainability transition
, and innovation
management literature streams. Firstly, this chapter highlights the potential of 6G
in both environmental and social sustainability
conceptually while ensuring economic sustainability as well as practically by referring to examples. Secondly, it is one of the rare studies that focuses on the larger picture in the 6G
and sustainability
debate by highlighting specific UN SDGs which can be achieved in the sustainability transition
and the role of endogenous and exogenous factors using the MLP
lens. Hence, the potential practical and policy implications of this chapter are expected to be profound.
The rest of this chapter is organized in the following manner. The next section analyzes the established connection between sustainability and 6G. After that, 6G development in relation to the sustainability transition is analyzed via the MLP approach. Here, the niche aspects are presented, after which the socio-technical regimes and institutional factors linked to the sustainability transition in this context are discussed along with the wider debate on the UN SDGs. The sub-section after that discussion aims to bring the larger society into debate by focusing on exogenous the socio-technical landscape of 6G development and sustainability transition. The last section presents theoretical and policy implications, along with a discussion on the study limitations and future research directions, restructuring possibilities linked to 6G are discussed in relation to the increased complexity of the external environment.