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The paper addresses a poorly documented issue in the literature, namely the role of clusters in green transformation, including processes related to green, low-carbon, and circular economies. The purpose was to identify and understand the practices of clusters in this area. The adopted mixed research strategy consisted of both qualitative and quantitative research. Both research phases were conducted in a group of Polish Key National Clusters. Through qualitative research, the authors abductively identified practices that are vital for green transformation and categorized them into three thematic areas: Integration, Access to resources, and Education and awareness building. On this basis, the authors developed a method to measure the clusters' level of advancement in green practices, which was used in quantitative research. The results show that the surveyed clusters undertake a number of practices to promote green transformation. They are active in each of the distinguished areas and also engage in its most demanding forms. The study sheds new light on the concept of the clusters, showing how such organizations can be used as agents of change in favor of green transformation. • Research on clusters in relation to green transformation is at a very early stage. • Clusters can pursue various practices to promote green transformation. • Cluster green practices can be grouped as: Integration, Resources, and Education. • Advancement of Polish National Key Clusters in green transformation is rather high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although green growth has become the economic development strategy of many countries in the world, and studies have analyzed the influencing factors of green growth from multiple angles, there are few literatures devoted to the impact of fintech and green finance on green growth. From the perspective of fintech development, this paper tries to construct a comprehensive index to evaluate the green growth of regional economy based on the in-depth analysis of the influence mechanism of green finance on green growth. At the same time, China's provincial panel data from 2011 to 2018 are selected to test the impact of fintech innovation and green finance on green growth, and its mechanism. It turns out that fintech and green finance significantly promotes green economic growth. At the same time, the impact of fintech and green finance on green growth has obvious regional heterogeneity, that is, the impact in eastern China is significantly stronger than that in central and western China. Further research shows that fintech innovation mainly promotes green economic growth through green credit and green investment. Therefore, fintech innovation can promote green economic growth by improving the development level of green finance, which has great reference significance for most countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is in support of the development of an ecological economic framework. It discusses, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the increasing use of green IT and their applications (IT for green). IT and sustainable development have had a concomitant rise and reach. The future world emerging from their respective interpretations enables, in both cases, a shift from today's questionable industrial capitalism towards post-industrial capitalism. This paper addresses the following questions: What is known about green IT and IT for green? Are smart solutions (buildings, energy grids, transport) always beneficial to an ecological economy? And, if so, in what ways? In the first part of this article, we analyse the economic, social and environmental impact of IT and argue for the need for green applications of green IT in order to achieve sustainable outcomes. The second part focuses on the managerial dimension of eco-innovation theory and presents one of the distinctive features of green applications of green IT: the collective organisation of innovation. A typology of eco-innovation aimed at reconciling IT development and green growth is then proposed explicitly addressing four kinds of changes towards sustainable development: technological, social, institutional and organisational innovation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper uses Boundary Organization Theory (BOT) to examine the proposition that Dutch Environmental Co-operatives (ECs) conform to the characteristics of boundary organizations (BOs). Many conservationists believe BO-type institutions are essential for addressing eco-system management problems, but believe there are currently too few examples of BOs working across sustainability issues. It is concluded that ECs have organizational structures and work practices typical of BOs: they allow people on different sides of the land management for food and nature conservation boundary (land managers, conservationists, scientists and policy makers) to negotiate to transform agri-environmental schemes into boundary objects and scheme options into implementable standardized packages. This is achieved by adopting convening, translation, collaboration and mediation functions that create extended peer communities able to contribute important knowledge of eco-system management, whilst allowing each participate to remain within their respective professional boundaries and responsible to their different constituencies. As an example of BOs, ECs are a post-normal sustainability technology (PNST) that offers “clumsy” solutions to the “wicked” problem of eco-system management. BOs work in many fields across the globe, showing their underling organizational principals and working practices are not restricted to any particular issue or geographical monopoly. As such, ECs – adjusted to suit local priorities and circumstances – could be the basis of a more widely used sustainability-led governance unit most particularly where cultural practices favour collective and collaborative behaviour. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we construct a theoretical model considering that wage distortion is exogenous and endogenous, respectively, to explore the effect of wage distortion on green technological progress. Furthermore, using the panel data of China's industrial sector, we investigate the direct influence and mediating effect of wage distortion on green technological progress. We find that the green technological progress of China's industrial sector continued to rise from 2002 to 2012. However, the green technological progress of China's manufacturing sub-sectors is relatively slow. The wage distortion phenomenon that the labor's real wage level is less than the labor's marginal product level is widespread, especially in manufacturing sub-sectors. Moreover, green technological progress has a path-dependence characteristic. Wage distortion plays an important role in the changes in the direction of green technological progress. Green technological progress is more likely to appear in the sub-sectors which experience low wage distortion degree, while the sub-sectors with severe wage distortion experience a lower green technological progress rate. Wage distortion increases industrial profit margins by deliberately suppressing the rise of wages. In addition, increased industrial profit margins reduce the incentives of the green technological innovation of equipment suppliers and inhibit the improvement in green production technology. Therefore, alleviating wage distortion can benefit the green development of industrial sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]