| Popis: |
Stakeholders in their cities and communities are increasingly concerned with how sustainable development initiatives are reconfiguring social, economic, political, ecological, built system resources towards the development of sustainable cities. Measuring city-level sustainability performance and implementing concrete sustainable development initiatives toward flourishing cities are among the biggest challenges societies face as we move into the first quarter of the twenty-first century. However, many cities, particularly in the U.S., have stagnated and are declining in their progress towards achieving sustainable cities. Reductionist approaches to managing sustainability and promoting change have not been sufficient to reverse the effects of climate change nor increase social well-being metrics within communities. Integrative, whole systems management approaches are emerging as viable options that are expected to be effective in tackling the challenges at the scale of organizational systems, cities, and communities. My empirical motivation is to extend the literature on integrative ecosystem management approaches that seek to transform cities as sustainable ecosystems filled with a flourishing vitality. I employed a mixed methods approach consisting of qualitative and quantitative methods. The three studies in this dissertation provide empirical evidence interpreted through multiple theoretical lenses. The benefit of the mixed methods approach was to examine various aspects and dimensions of sustainable development in cities ecosystems. These studies seek to explain how integrative systems management can serve as a viable and effective method to address the challenges of transitioning cities into sustainable ecosystems. Study 1 examines factors that lead to successful sustainable development implementation in cities based on interview data from sustainability managers. Study 2 covers a scale development study that observes Appreciative Inquiry (AI) platforms as the operating system and the strengths, opportunities, aspiration, results (SOAR) framework as the strategic process for improving innovative capacity and resilience in city ecosystems. Study 3 is a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative case analysis that forms combinations of factors explaining city ecosystems’ sustainable development performance. Based on my collective findings, I advance a discussion of three critical components that compose the integrative ecosystem management approach towards achieving cities as sustainable eco-systems: Macro-management strategy, meta-organization governance structure, and developing dynamic capabilities. Cities’ stakeholders that deploy the macromanagement strategy need to organize multiple stakeholders into a meta-organizing governance structure to develop dynamic capabilities that foster sustainable innovation towards achieving flourishing cities as sustainable ecosystems. |
