Analysis of sustainability systems requires broad knowledge of technologies that provide for the urgent needs of society. But, even more so, it requires well-balanced thinking that encompasses causal connections and factors both within and outside the apparent system boundary. How do we appropriately account for various environmental, economical, and social concerns? What strategy should we choose to promote sustainability ideas to society? Which technologies would be optimal for addressing local needs and building a sustainable market? All these and other questions are subject to decisions at the levels of policymaking, business development, and community development. In this lesson, we will study factors that influence human decision with respect to innovations and technology. In the end, we get to see that the human factor is a key leverage point that can control the dynamics of the whole sustainability system.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• identify the factors that affect human decisions with respect to innovation and technology;
• set up a framework for collaborative decision-making on a specific problem;
• articulate the fundamentals of the Diffusion of Innovation theory;
• analyze the role of the technologies in the dynamic feedback within the global sustainability context.

Readings

Business report: Network for Business Sustainability, Making Sustainable Choices. A Guide for Managers, 2012.

Website: Structural Decision Making, Compass Resource Management Ltd., 2014.

Journal article: Simpson, L., Community Informatics and Sustainability: Why Social Capital Matters, J. Community informatics, 1(2) (2005).

Book Chapter: Sterman, J.D., Sustaining Sustainability: Creating a Systems Science in a Fragmented Academy and Polarized World, in Sustainability Science: The Emerging Paradigm, Weinstein, M.P. and Turner, R.E. (Eds.), Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012.

Questions?

If you have any questions while working through this Lesson, please post them to our Message Board forum in Canvas. You can use that space any time to chat about course topics or to ask questions. While you are there, please feel free to post your own responses if you are able to help out a classmate.

The process of collaborative decision making is aimed at combining the input from all stakeholders and therefore at making the best choice from the standpoint of the objectivity. It is typical that decisions made by groups differ from those made by individuals. However, there is no clear indication that the group decisions are consistently better (or worse) than individual decisions. Also, collaborative decisions are apparently linked to group behaviors, interactions between members, role distribution, and psychological factors that can affect people's thinking.

The decisions regarding policies, economic actions, and assessments of alternatives for sustainable development especially require collaborative thinking due to the complexity and polarity of factors and interests involved. Design of the decision making process is therefore an important issue to learn for managers, policymakers, and experts involved in evaluation of business alternatives.

Study the following reading material based on the research of the Network for Business Sustainability (nbs.net), which examines the factors that steer people towards or away from sustainable choices.

The discussion forum in the end of this lesson will involve you in a self-evaluative exercise where you can try to recognize your own bias towards any theme in sustainability or related technology.

Structured Decision Making (SDM) methodology

Structured Decision Making (SDM) is a specially developed organized approach to making complex decisions. For example, when we face a choice of developing and implementing a new technology (versus an older status-quo technology), that is certainly considered a complex decision. Assuming that reaching high sustainability level is the focus of our decisions, technical feasibility, economic viability, environmental impact, and social impact are the main cornerstones of such an assessment, as we learned before. The SDM method is designed to organize information and direct the process of collaborative decision making towards the optimal solution, and helps to eliminate bias and find win-win scenarios if those exist. SDM was proved to be especially beneficial for the organizations that require transparency and efficient response to diverse public needs.

Please study the materials on the SDM website, referenced below, starting with SDM Overview, which explains in more details the purpose and structure of this method. Then proceed to the pages describing Steps and Tools used in the SDM analysis. Make sure to open the "Read More" links on those pages to study details.

In the end of this lesson, you will be asked to perform an activity related to the SDM framework. 

Social networks, both inter-personal and virtual, are known to have a strong influence on people's life, behavior, and choices. This influence can take any direction, negative or positive, conservative or destructive, depending on the network dynamics and trends. Lately, significant attention has been paid to the opportunities related to the promotion of sustainable behaviors through social networks.

As was shown by some community models (Xu et al., 2012), physical and social networks within which residents are connected and influence one another via certain relationships tend to foster notable savings in community energy consumption. Interestingly, the interpersonal closeness between members in the community, identified as a place-affiliated network, was found to create leverage for encouraging energy conservation behavior. Based on this study, the primary spheres of the community network include integrated buildings, occupant social networks, and surrounding neighborhood facilities. The integrated energy efficient building infrastructure is shown to have the potential for 2.3-22.3% energy savings; however, a social network is noted as an even more powerful factor, resulting in additional 11.7-31.1% of energy savings, when energy awareness is promoted through the interpersonal relationships (Xu et al., 2012). Social encouragement is seen as a more cost-effective way to energy conservation than physical upgrades and renovations. The residents are seen to be motivated to conserve energy when they are aware if their neighbors and friends are changing in similar ways. The third sphere of the community network - surrounding neighborhood facilities - are shown to promote social networking and its benefits. These facilities provide additional channels for people to communicate, and also provide physical grounds for shared monitoring systems and shared appliances and services.

Similarly, the social networks may play an important role in the diffusion of innovative technologies. Diffusion of Innovation is a theory describing patterns of technology adoption to society and predicting whether a particular innovation can be successful or not (Rogers, 2003; Kautz, 1999). The theory emphasizes the process of communicating an innovation through various channels in a social system. The four key elements that influence the spread of a new technology or idea are (i) innovation, (ii) communication channels, (iii) time, and (iv) social system (Rogers, 2003). Rogers also identifies five main steps in the innovation adoption process; those steps are: awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. Theoretical timeline of technology adoption is illustrated in Figure 11.1.

Figure 11.1. Dynamics of technology adoption according to the Diffusion of Innovation theory. The blue curve shows the gradual adoption of a new technology in % shares by different groups of people. Yellow curve shows the technology market share, which is eventually saturated.

Credit: Based on Rogers, E. (1962) Diffusion of innovations. Free Press, London, NY, USA. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The Diffusion of Innovation theory puts the importance of the social networks and interpersonal channels above the mass media when it comes to adoption decisions, emphasizing several key agents - opinion leaders, electronic communications, social and organizational hierarchies - as triggers for change. There is an observation that people often evaluate a new idea based on the subjective recommendation by someone like themselves, who has evaluated and adopted that idea previously (Simpson, 2005).

The following article is a case study exploring the role of social involvement in the adoption of ideas of technology and sustainability. It provides an example of an application of the Diffusion of Innovation theory to rural communities in Australia.

In sustainability analysis, we are often reminded to broaden our view beyond the immediate boundaries of the problem and try to recognize the various forces that control the system, sometimes against our expectations. Thus, looking at a technological system, and being focused on the dynamics of the process and on the physical principles, it is easy to miss the human factor, which may be as powerful in the final success of the technology as its physical efficiency or economic benefit. Solar panels may be working and bring environmental and economic profits in some cases, but why do we still not have them on our roof? Human resistance has its causes, well justified, which are often left behind the scenes.

The following book chapter written by J.D. Sterman of MIT Sloan School of Management reflects on the intricacy of connections that surround the sustainability paradigm. The author picks a number of factors that are connected to human thinking and behavioral feedbacks. One of the surprising observations the author makes is how intuitive judgment of a situation, perception of benefit or urgency can sometimes be far off the reality.

Because our particular focus in this course is on technologies, how they develop, and how they can impact the future being of society, please especially pay attention to the system analysis on pages 46-52 of the above-referenced chapter, which explains the balancing feedback loops created by technological innovation and markets. There is a discussion if those loops are powerful enough to "save the world", and, I think, it is a good point to reflect on. Spend some time examining the system diagram in Fig. 10 of the chapter. You may agree or disagree with the author on certain points, and maybe in that process you can find additional loops (not shown on the diagram) to provide leverage to the system survival.

On the other hand, solving the carrying capacity problem with new technology creates the condition for further growth, and further growth creates a problem with carrying capacity again. Solve the scarcity problem again through innovation and efficient markets, the system will grow again and create new scarcity. What follows from this logic is that we can solve the problem of available resources for earth population for some time, but we may not be able to keep solving it forever. Simply because the typical delays in technology development would not diminish, and innovations themselves will require more and more planet resources. On the other end of the dragon, intentional control of the growth may have some promise as a strategy to bring the technology and consumption to some kind of balance.

You can treat this reading as a recap of the sustainability issues discussed in this class. Technologies, methodologies, policies, economic models, and social trends are all building blocks of the bigger concept, and now we can look back to review the big picture and think how to put all those building blocks together. This effort would require a new type of thinking, personal and societal change – a task no less challenging than building a new technology. “To move beyond slogans, we need to develop our systems thinking capabilities, methods that avoid both self-defeating pessimism and mindless optimism, while remaining true to scientific methods and ecological realities.” (Sterman, 2012)

I hope that this discussion does not push you to the pessimistic side of the story, but rather urges you to develop more knowledge and insight into the real working mechanisms of sustainable development. While advocating for new technologies, we should also fully understand the limits of time and resources behind them and recognize other necessary leverage points, in particular, required social and behavioral adjustments.

Proper sustainability assessment should always strive to include systems analysis, which places a technology or subject matter into social context. Copy the Fig. 10 diagram for your reference - it may be a good baseline for system discussion of technology in your course project report.

We reached the end of Lesson 11, which explored some important social and behavioral factors affecting the development and adoption of new technologies. This process of adoption goes through several decision points - both at the business level (for example, through collaborative decision making) and at the community level (through social networking and hierarchies). Social networks are seen to grow in power with respect to how they can influence group decisions and trends. One important factor to emphasize at any stage is time. Timeline of technology development and adoption is directly linked to the delays in feedback loops, which control the dynamics of the whole sustainability cycle.

This lesson is the last one in this course, and it is capped with a discussion of the global system of connections and trends, in which technology has a definite leverage point. Through all the lessons, we reviewed and got some exercise with a few methods of technology assessment, which will be useful, hopefully, in your future professional practice.

This will be the end of our formal content for this class. You will spend the remaining time on finalizing your course project report, which is supposed to synthesize the ideas learned over these eleven weeks.