Sociotechnical Transitions Towards Sustainability in a Multilevel Perspective: overview and future perspectives

Abstract

The theory of socio-technical transition emerged as a conceptual framework to examine and understand changes towards sustainability. Mapping the relevant intellectual territory to specify a research question is essential to deepen the studies and expand the frontier of knowledge. In this sense, this paper aims to explore the state of the literature about socio-technical transitions and MLP, trying to trace an evolution of the existing studies and characterize the multilevel perspective as a framework to further analysis. From there, it will be possible to validate the framework and outline future perspectives on the theme. The review methodology is based on PRISMA recommendations. Due to the relevance to the area and availability of indexed journals, the ISI, Science Direct, Emerald, Willey, and Scopus databases were searched, considering only papers published in peer-reviewed journals. A portfolio of 65 papers was gathered for analysis. It was performed a descriptive analysis of the papers. Afterward, a critical synthesis of the material was underlined. It demonstrates a tendency to combine models and theories to account for the complexity of current socio-technical transition studies. From that, it was possible to draw a few perspectives for future studies about the theme. It concludes that MLP is a valuable framework for addressing socio-technical change and qualitative approaches are still essential to elaborate the theory. Regarding future studies, we suggest that strategy and organizational theories could be brought to the field of socio-technical transitions.