School of Business

The central suggestion of this paper is that innovation in the concept of entrepreneurship is overdue and that the concept of entrepreneurship needs to be extended to accommodate its often neglected collective or pluralistic dimension, a concept termed “associative entrepreneurship”. It has also been argued that there may be a natural link between sustainability and the co-operative form. In this paper these themes are drawn together by considering the entrepreneurial potential expressed by the recent creation of mutual businesses in a range of renewable energy sectors in Wales. It is suggested that, at least in the renewable energy sector and perhaps in other sectors too, innovation in the direction of sustainability may require a development of the concept of entrepreneurship in the direction of mutualism.

The world as we know it needs a new economics. Climate change, financial crisis and out-of-control globalization - all the major problems facing the world have their root in the dominant economic system. The globalised marketplace is the prevailing force in our lives, undermining the real importance of our human communities and our planet. Green Economics argues that society should be embedded within the ecosystem, and that markets and economies are social structures that should respond to social and environmental priorities.

This highly readable text provides an introduction to green economics including views on taxation, welfare, money, economic development and employment through the work of its inspirational figures including Schumacher, Robertson and Douthwaite. It also explores the contributions and insights of schools of thought critical of the dominant neo-classical economic paradigm, including ecofeminism, views from the global South, and the perspective of indigenous peoples. Examples of effective green policies that are already being implemented across the world are presented, as well as policy prescriptions for issues including climate change, localization, citizens' income, economic measurement, ecotaxes and trade.

As environmental issues move to the centre of the political debate, more attention is being focused on the role our economy has played in creating the ecological crisis, and what a sustainable economy might look like. In spite of the success of the environmental movement in drawing attention to the crisis facing us, there has been comparatively little attention focused on the way the operation of the global economy contributes to this crisis.

Environment and Economy provides a stimulating introductory insight into the history of thinking that has linked the economy and the environment. It begins by introducing readers to the pioneers of this field, such as Fritz Schumacher and Paul Ehrlich, who first drew attention to the disastrous consequences for our environment of our ever-expanding economy. Part two of the book describes the main academic responses to the need to resolve the tension between economy and environment: environmental economics, ecological economics, green economics, and anti-capitalist economics. Part three is structured around key themes including an introduction to economic instruments such as taxes and regulation; pollution and resource depletion; growth; globalization vs. localization and climate change. Each key issue is approached from a range of different perspectives, and working policies are presented in detail.

Written in an accessible style, this introductory text offers students with an engaging account of the way that the various traditions of economic thought have approached the environment, bringing them together for the first time in one volume. The text is complimented by boxes, case studies and recommended reading for each theme addressed. It will be of value to students interested in environmental sciences, geography, green issues and economics.

Market, Schmarket is a challenge to well-motivated and well
educated citizens to stop whingeing about the disasters being
wrought by the capitalist economy and start doing something
to build an alternative. The book anatomises the central bases
of the globalised economy—the market, trade, money, and
work—and proposes sustainable and humane alternatives.

Focusing on the long-suffering valleys of southern Wales, which have endured prolonged periods of economic depression following multiple coal pit closures in the 1980s and 1990s, this work argues that at the root of these economic woes is the inherent conflict between competitive and individualist economic models, and the community-based culture of the region. Suggesting a new approach to economic development for the area that actually bolsters the vitality of local culture by empowering local people to work together to make the most of existing possibilities, this study makes concrete suggestions for how the Welsh economy and government can best utilize their resources. In addition, the negative effects of inward investment strategies are examined, and a report that surveyed local attitudes toward work is discussed.

In a world of climate change and declining oil supplies what is the plan for the provisioning of basic resources? Green economists suggest a need to replace the globalised economy, and its extended supply chains, with a more local economy. But what does this mean in more concrete terms? How large is a local economy, how self-reliant can it be, and what resources will still need to be imported? This paper proposes the concept of the ‘bioregion’—developed and popularized within the disciplines of earth sciences, biosciences and planning—as a heuristic device to facilitate the reconceptualisation of the global economy as a system of largely self-sufficient local economies.

This paper explores the contribution that the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze might offer to researchers studying social innovation in response to climate change. Since the publication of the Stern Report it has been recognized that climate change requires major changes to the way our economy is organized, but it also requires significant social and behavioral change. Can this be usefully viewed through the prism of theories of social innovation? How might such social innovation affect the life chances of the socially excluded and to what extent does it, therefore, offer a space for radical social change? The Transition Towns — a community movement in response to climate change — is used as a test-case of these ideas.

The paper analyses a pragmatic approach to redesigning a third-year undergraduate module on twenty-first century business topics such as globalisation and sustainability in which students acquire subject-specific knowledge as well as the tools necessary for challenging current approaches. The redesign was guided by a series of emergent paradigms within the pedagogical literature, including student-centred learning, emphasis on skills development and elements of the critical management perspective. “Questioning perceived wisdom” became the subtext for a series of activities linked to continuous assessment. Action research provided a basis for curricular development, and resulted in lectures with multiple viewpoints and a variety of weekly tasks including analyses of in-class debates, surveys, and online discussions in small groups. The new structure also sought to address instrumental attitudes and student engagement. Rich qualitative and quantitative data were generated from the surveys, discussion groups, exam scripts and student feedback.

How we know, is at least as important as what we know: Before educationalists can begin to teach sustainability, we need to explore our own views of the world and how these are formed. The paper explores the ontological assumptions that underpin, usually implicitly, the pedagogical relationship and opens up the question of how people know each other and the world they share. Using understandings based in a phenomenological approach and guided by social constructionism, it suggests that the most appropriate pedagogical method for teaching sustainability is one based on situated learning and reflexive practice. To support its ontological questioning, the paper highlights two alternative culture’s ways of understanding and recording the world: Those of the Inca who inhabited pre-Columbian Peru, which was based on the quipu system of knotted strings, and the complex social and religious system of the songlines of the original people of Australia. As an indication of the sorts of teaching experiences that an emancipatory and relational pedagogy might give rise to, the paper offers examples of two community learning experiences in the exemplar sustainable community of Stroud, Gloucestershire in the United Kingdom where the authors live.

The issue of food security is rising rapidly up the political agenda, especially in Europe. The broad parameters of the EU were developed in the immediate post-war years and, consequently, much of its early energy in the area of agriculture was devoted to supporting farmers and maximizing food production. This led to over-production and a lack of attention to environmental standards in agriculture. More recently, a number of ecological and economic issues have combined to threaten supplies of food to some of Europe’s developed nations, particularly the UK. This paper begins by outlining the nature of the problem facing the UK in terms of food supply. It sets the debate within the framework of climate change and resource insecurity, indicating that the UK’s policy of trading financial services in return for food bought on the global market seems increasingly vulnerable. The paper then moves on to consider the role of co-operatives in food production and distribution and identifies the dominance of food in the history and current status of the co-operative movement in the UK. By way of conclusion, the paper questions how the co-operative economic model may be able to make a timely contribution to underpinning food security in the UK.

People often accuse the Greens of being nostalgic, or wanting to ‘go back to the horse and cart’. For me it feels more like hiraeth than nostalgia. Nostalgia is a yearning for a state that can never be reached because it is in the past. It is a futile and demotivating emotion. Hiraeth, by contrast, is a yearning for a place from which we are separated only by space—an emotion arising as a result of home thoughts from abroad. In the case of the Transition Handbook that feeling is not associated with any particular space but with a space that we hope to build—a genuine, sustainable utopia, but one not situated in any historical or foreign place but right here at home. Beyond that, in fact, it is a desire to reconnect with a lost sense of the importance of place itself; to re-create, through getting muddy in our local soil, a connection with a locality. This is the compelling force behind the Transition vision and it is this, not the therapeutic jargon or the New Age imagery, that has made Rob Hopkins’s book a bestseller.

This paper proposes the possibility of a link between the commitment to building a sustainable economy and the cooperative model of organisation. The analysis is based in an analysis of guild socialist and utopian socialist ideas that supported the development of cooperatives and their links with current green political economy. The cooperative is a natural form of productive organization as visualized by both these traditions. The research findings reported in the paper relate to an audit of 81 cooperatives in Wales (Arthur et al., 2004), whose sample included 17 cooperatives operating with a clear commitment to the environment. A brief illustration of the practicalities of bringing together these shared ideas and the activity of environmentally-focused cooperatives in Wales is offered. It is suggested that further research into the existence of an environmental niche in Wales and its relationship to guild socialist, utopian socialist and green ideas may be fruitful.
Issues of accountability and responsibility are seen as key to the possible
sustainability-cooperative link.

This paper explores the growth of community currencies in Argentina following the financial collapse of 2001 and draws lessons for local economies in developed economies. The paper begins with a brief profile of the Argentinian economy, which is seen to be highly sophisticated and successful. The reasons for the banking crisis of 2001 are then explained, focusing especially on monetarist IMF policies and their disastrous effect on the real economy of Argentina. Information is then given
about the nature of the Red Global de Trueque (global barter network), its link to the ecological movement, and its development into a fully fledged system of alternative
currencies following the monetary crisis. Problems facing the system as it expanded, and its relationship with local political authorities, and their own alternative currencies are described. Links are then drawn between the problems facing the Argentinian economy in 2001 and those facing many local economies in the UK facing long-term recession, particularly in terms of low levels of monetisation and the low value of the local multiplier. The paper concludes that a local economy with a
functioning currency under its control is in a strong position to withstand potential crises in the functioning of the global economy.

The present crisis in the global economy is more serious than anything that we have witnessed since the 1930s, yet policies designed to tackle it are limited and inadequate. Those that have been proposed, in terms of fiscal stimulus, rely on an outmoded view of the economy, where money can be used to force economic growth. Since the recognition of planetary limits such a strategy is no longer admissible. Instead, we need a global system where countries agree to limit their carbon dioxide emissions: this chapter outlines the Contraction and Convergence model (C&C), which proposes that countries do this within a framework of equal per capita emissions for all global citizens. However, within the existing financial architecture such a policy would do nothing to prevent the United States from continuing to print dollars and to use these to gain an unfair share of world production. Other countries controlling reserve currencies would also be able to avoid strict limits. The policy answer proposed is that of the Ebcu (environment-backed currency unit) – a neutral global trading currency to be used by countries that have also signed up to the C&C model.

Abstract. At the level of public discourse the debate surrounding European sovereign debt crises has become polarised between the need for greater levels of public spending cuts and privatisation (‘austerity’) and the need to use government investment or reductions in regulatory policies to bring about renewed economic growth. This effectively sidelines a whole range of the most important questions from the point of view of the citizens of Europe: How was the debt acquired? How are the gains and losses caused by the crisis to be shared between debtors and creditors? Are there alternatives to the repayment of the debt, which demands such a high social price? In order to begin to answer these questions, citizens and campaigners in a number of European and North African countries have established campaigns for ‘Citizens’ Audits’. They are demanding full access to government accounts and full details of how destructive debts were acquired in their names. These campaigns are organised around the concept of ‘odious debt’, first developed by the US and later used by countries of the majority world to challenge their external debts. This paper offers some theoretical background to the idea of a Citizens’ Audit and provides thumbnail sketches of the activity of audit campaigns in a number of European and North African countries.

Purpose–To study the relationship between organization structure and socio-economic impact in the Welsh music industry and the potential role of social enterprises. Design/methodology/approach–The economic value of social enterprise and the role of creative industries in urban regeneration are discussed from the viewpoint of the inclusion of marginalized workers, especially the young, into the labour-market.

Alongside document analyses and numerous site visits to observe operations and talk informally with cooperative members across the organization, we have conducted more structured interviews at all levels in the organization. These include extensive discussions with the personnel officer (an ex-NUM official), other managers and (elected) Board members, face-workers and surface workers. All members are deemed to be 'employeeshareholders'.

Political subsidiarity is defined as exercising power at the lowest feasible level. It resonates with green politicians whose inclination is always to work from the bottom up. The localisation agenda being developed by green economists begins at the locality for sound environmental rather than political reasons. This paper suggests the extension of the concept of 'subsidiarity'into the realm of production and consumption, so that we naturally tend to look to purchase goods produced as close to where we live as possible.