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Sustainability and Sustainable Development: Chance of System Failure Due to Event Characteristics

Received: 20 January 2019     Published: 28 April 2019
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Abstract

While performance along social, environment and economic dimensions has gained traction in business and society, the focus has been on system continuity. Because of the different interpretations which can be attached to sustainability or sustainable development, consensus on appropriate goals of the system, whatever the system might be, may be more difficult to develop than consensus on what is not wanted – such as a system failure. System failure in this context is meant to convey a system’s inability to adapt to changes in the external or internal environments brought on by an event that disturbs the equilibrium of forces acting on it (the system). A failure then is linked to the interaction between the event and the characteristics which differentiate one event from the next, and the system and the characteristics which differentiate one system from the next. This paper focuses on sustainability and system continuity in terms of understanding conditions that promote system failure from the perspective of the event characteristics. It examines threats to system failure in the context of the characteristics of the event which causes the disturbance threatening system stability.

Published in Journal of Energy and Natural Resources (Volume 8, Issue 1)
DOI 10.11648/j.jenr.20190801.14
Page(s) 18-29
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2019. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Sustainable Development, System Failure, System Stability, Disturbance, Event Characteristics

References
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[3] Commoner, Barry. The closing circle: nature, man, and technology. Knopf, 2014.
[4] Commoner, B. Making peace with the planet. New York, New York, Pantheon, 1975.
[5] Dodd, Dominic, and Ken Favaro. "Managing the right tension." Harvard Business Review 84, no. 12: p. 62-74.
[6] Ehrenfeld, John R. "The roots of sustainability: the real business case for sustainability requires more radical, fundamental and difficult change than most are ready to consider, but anything less ignores the real problem and may, in fact, contribute to it." MIT Sloan Management Review 46, no. 2: p. 23-26.
[7] Hall, Jeremy, and Harrie Vredenburg. "The challenges of innovating for sustainable development: To foster sustainable development, an innovation strategy must have vision that transcends a maelstrom of complex, and sometimes contradictory, demands." MIT Sloan Management Review 45, no. 1: 61-69.
[8] Hart, Stuart L. "Beyond greening: strategies for a sustainable world." Harvard Business Review 75, no.1: p. 66-77.
[9] Hart, Stuart L. "Worlds in collision." Journal of Organizational Excellence 25, no. 3: p. 13-25.
[10] Hart, S. L. and M. B. Milstein. “Creating sustainable value.” Academy of Management Executive 17, no. 2: p. 56-67.
[11] Hawken, Paul, Amory B. Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. Natural capitalism: The next industrial revolution. Routledge, 2013.
[12] Ingersoll, Christina, Richard M. Locke, and Cate Reavis. "BP and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster of 2010." MIT Sloan School of Management, Case Study, 2012.
[13] Isenmann, R. “Industrial ecology: Its perspective of understanding nature as model.” Sustainable Development 11: p. 143-158.
[14] Jürgens, Hartmut, and Dietmar Saupe. Chaos and fractals: new frontiers of science. Springer New York, 2006.
[15] Keiner, Marco, ed. The future of sustainability. Amsterdam: Springer, 2006.
[16] Rosen, Robert. "Complexity and system descriptions." In Systems: Approaches, Theories, Applications, pp. 169-175. Springer, Dordrecht, 1977.
[17] Senge, Peter M., Benyamin B. Lichtenstein, Katrin Kaeufer, Hilary Bradbury, and John S. Carroll. "Collaborating for systemic change." MIT Sloan management review 48, no. 2: 44.
[18] Shrivastava, P. “The role of corporations in achieving ecological sustainability.” Academy of Management Journal 20: p. 936-960.
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Charles Arvid Backman. (2019). Sustainability and Sustainable Development: Chance of System Failure Due to Event Characteristics. Journal of Energy and Natural Resources, 8(1), 18-29. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jenr.20190801.14

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    ACS Style

    Charles Arvid Backman. Sustainability and Sustainable Development: Chance of System Failure Due to Event Characteristics. J. Energy Nat. Resour. 2019, 8(1), 18-29. doi: 10.11648/j.jenr.20190801.14

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    AMA Style

    Charles Arvid Backman. Sustainability and Sustainable Development: Chance of System Failure Due to Event Characteristics. J Energy Nat Resour. 2019;8(1):18-29. doi: 10.11648/j.jenr.20190801.14

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  • @article{10.11648/j.jenr.20190801.14,
      author = {Charles Arvid Backman},
      title = {Sustainability and Sustainable Development: Chance of System Failure Due to Event Characteristics},
      journal = {Journal of Energy and Natural Resources},
      volume = {8},
      number = {1},
      pages = {18-29},
      doi = {10.11648/j.jenr.20190801.14},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.jenr.20190801.14},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.jenr.20190801.14},
      abstract = {While performance along social, environment and economic dimensions has gained traction in business and society, the focus has been on system continuity. Because of the different interpretations which can be attached to sustainability or sustainable development, consensus on appropriate goals of the system, whatever the system might be, may be more difficult to develop than consensus on what is not wanted – such as a system failure. System failure in this context is meant to convey a system’s inability to adapt to changes in the external or internal environments brought on by an event that disturbs the equilibrium of forces acting on it (the system). A failure then is linked to the interaction between the event and the characteristics which differentiate one event from the next, and the system and the characteristics which differentiate one system from the next. This paper focuses on sustainability and system continuity in terms of understanding conditions that promote system failure from the perspective of the event characteristics. It examines threats to system failure in the context of the characteristics of the event which causes the disturbance threatening system stability.},
     year = {2019}
    }
    

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    AB  - While performance along social, environment and economic dimensions has gained traction in business and society, the focus has been on system continuity. Because of the different interpretations which can be attached to sustainability or sustainable development, consensus on appropriate goals of the system, whatever the system might be, may be more difficult to develop than consensus on what is not wanted – such as a system failure. System failure in this context is meant to convey a system’s inability to adapt to changes in the external or internal environments brought on by an event that disturbs the equilibrium of forces acting on it (the system). A failure then is linked to the interaction between the event and the characteristics which differentiate one event from the next, and the system and the characteristics which differentiate one system from the next. This paper focuses on sustainability and system continuity in terms of understanding conditions that promote system failure from the perspective of the event characteristics. It examines threats to system failure in the context of the characteristics of the event which causes the disturbance threatening system stability.
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Author Information
  • Department of Business and Office Administration, Grande Prairie College, Grande Prairie, Canada

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