IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v16y2024i22p10092-d1524424.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

International Political Economy, Business Ecosystems, Entrepreneurship, and Sustainability: A Synthesis on the Case of the Energy Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Dimos Chatzinikolaou

    (Department of Economics, Democritus University of Thrace, 69100 Komotini, Greece
    Knowledge Management, Innovation and Strategy Center (KISC), University of Nicosia, P.O. Box 24005, Nicosia CY-2417, Cyprus)

  • Charis Michael Vlados

    (Department of Economics, Democritus University of Thrace, 69100 Komotini, Greece
    Knowledge Management, Innovation and Strategy Center (KISC), University of Nicosia, P.O. Box 24005, Nicosia CY-2417, Cyprus
    School of Business, University of Nicosia, P.O. Box 24005, Nicosia CY-2417, Cyprus)

Abstract

This paper explores the intricate relationships among the evolution of the international political economy, the dynamics of business ecosystems, and the transformations in entrepreneurship within the European energy sector, with a specific emphasis on Greece, particularly the less developed region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. The aim is to understand how geopolitical, economic, and technological dynamics interact across macro-, meso-, and microlevels, especially within the context of the ongoing global energy transition. A multi-method approach is employed, including interviews with 16 experts, a survey of 89 energy firms, and eight in-depth interviews with microfirm owners. A key finding is that an integrated and evolutionary macro–meso–micro framework is essential for understanding and addressing the complex dynamics across various sectors, especially in the energy sector. The study highlights the need for targeted support for smaller firms through a restructured energy policy to foster local entrepreneurship and innovation. It further emphasizes that understanding the evolution of the global energy system and its components is crucial for addressing sustainability in environmental and socioeconomic terms, as the emerging model of energy production and consumption is directly tied to the reshaping of socioeconomic development models in the new globalization.

Suggested Citation

  • Dimos Chatzinikolaou & Charis Michael Vlados, 2024. "International Political Economy, Business Ecosystems, Entrepreneurship, and Sustainability: A Synthesis on the Case of the Energy Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(22), pages 1-24, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:22:p:10092-:d:1524424
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/22/10092/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/22/10092/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caroline Kuzemko & Andrew Lawrence & Matthew Watson, 2019. "New directions in the international political economy of energy," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 1-24, January.
    2. Dimos Chatzinikolaou & Charis Michael Vlados, 2024. "New Globalization and Energy Transition: Insights from Recent Global Developments," Societies, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-21, August.
    3. Philip McCann & Raquel Ortega-Argilés, 2016. "Smart specialisation, entrepreneurship and SMEs: issues and challenges for a results-oriented EU regional policy," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 537-552, April.
    4. Benjamin J. Cohen, 2008. "Introduction to International Political Economy: An Intellectual History," Introductory Chapters, in: International Political Economy: An Intellectual History, Princeton University Press.
    5. Chatzinikolaou, Dimos & Vlados, Charis, 2023. "Evolution of Business Physiology in the Wine Industry: Insights From the Stra.Tech.Man Scorecard in the Cephalonian Robola Sector," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 2-2023, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.
    6. Charis Vlados & Dimos Chatzinikolaou, 2019. "Business ecosystems policy in Stra.Tech.Man terms: The case of the Eastern Macedonia and Thrace region," Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, Fundacja Upowszechniająca Wiedzę i Naukę "Cognitione", vol. 15(3), pages 163-197.
    7. Duncan Foley, 2014. "Varieties of Keynesianism," International Journal of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(1), pages 4-19.
    8. Chatzinikolaou, Dimos & Vlados, Charis, 2024. "Public Support for Business, Intermediary Organizations, and Knowledge Transfer: Critical Development and Innovation Policy Bottlenecks," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 4-2024, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.
    9. Branger, Nicole & Flacke, René Marian & Gräber, Nikolai, 2020. "Monopoly power in the oil market and the macroeconomy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    10. Vlados, Charis & Chatzinikolaou, Dimos, 2024. "The Emergence of the New Globalization: the Approach of the Evolutionary Structural Triptych," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 2-2024, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.
    11. Vlados, Charis & Koronis, Epaminondas & Chatzinikolaou, Dimos, 2021. "Entrepreneurship and crisis in Greece from a neo-Schumpeterian perspective: A suggestion to stimulate the development process at the local level," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 1-2021, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.
    12. Duch-Brown, Néstor & Rossetti, Fiammetta, 2020. "Digital platforms across the European regional energy markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    13. Vlados, Charis & Chatzinikolaou, Dimos, 2020. "Macro, Meso, and Micro Policies for Strengthening Entrepreneurship: Towards an Integrated Competitiveness Policy," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 6-2020, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.
    14. Charis Vlados & Dimos Chatzinikolaou & Foteini Kapaltzoglou, 2021. "Energy Market Liberalisation in Greece: Structures, Policy and Prospects," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 11(2), pages 115-126.
    15. Busch, Jonathan & Roelich, Katy & Bale, Catherine S.E. & Knoeri, Christof, 2017. "Scaling up local energy infrastructure; An agent-based model of the emergence of district heating networks," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 170-180.
    16. Joern Block & Karsten Kohn & Danny Miller & Katrin Ullrich, 2015. "Necessity entrepreneurship and competitive strategy," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 37-54, January.
    17. Vernay, Anne-Lorène & Sebi, Carine & Arroyo, Fabrice, 2023. "Energy community business models and their impact on the energy transition: Lessons learnt from France," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).
    18. Vlados, Charis & Deniozos, Nikolaos & Chatzinikolaou, Dimos, 2019. "Dialectical Prerequisites on Geopolitics and Geoeconomics in Globalization's Restructuration Era," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 14-2019, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.
    19. Vlados, Charis, 2019. "The Phases of the Postwar Evolution of Capitalism: The Transition from the Current Crisis into a New Worldwide Developmental Trajectory," DUTH Research Papers in Economics 26-2019, Democritus University of Thrace, Department of Economics.
    20. Foster, John, 1997. "The analytical foundations of evolutionary economics: From biological analogy to economic self-organization," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 427-451, October.
    21. Eden, Colin & Ackermann, Fran, 2018. "Theory into practice, practice to theory: Action research in method development," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 271(3), pages 1145-1155.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dimos Chatzinikolaou & Charis Michael Vlados, 2025. "On a New Sustainable Energy Policy: Exploring a Macro-Meso-Micro Synthesis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 18(2), pages 1-24, January.
    2. Dimos Chatzinikolaou & Charis Michael Vlados, 2024. "New Globalization and Energy Transition: Insights from Recent Global Developments," Societies, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-21, August.
    3. David B. Audretsch & Erik E. Lehmann & Matthias Menter, 2016. "Public cluster policy and new venture creation," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 43(4), pages 357-381, December.
    4. V. I. Blanutsa, 2022. "Geographic Research of the Platform Economy: Existing and Potential Approaches," Regional Research of Russia, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 133-142, June.
    5. Michael Stuetzer & David B. Audretsch & Martin Obschonka & Samuel D. Gosling & Peter J. Rentfrow & Jeff Potter, 2018. "Entrepreneurship culture, knowledge spillovers and the growth of regions," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(5), pages 608-618, May.
    6. Estrin, Saul & Guerrero, Maribel & Mickiewicz, Tomasz, 2024. "A framework for investigating new firm entry: The (limited) overlap between informal-formal and necessity-opportunity entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 39(4).
    7. Sarah Eaton & Zhang Yu Xuan, 2008. "Dragon on a Short Leash : An Inside-Out Analysis of China Investment Corporation," Development Economics Working Papers 21983, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    8. António Madureira & Nico Baken & Harry Bouwman, 2011. "Value of digital information networks: a holonic framework," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 1-30, April.
    9. Jessica L. Darby & David J. Ketchen & Brent D. Williams & Travis Tokar, 2020. "The Implications of Firm‐Specific Policy Risk, Policy Uncertainty, and Industry Factors for Inventory: A Resource Dependence Perspective," Journal of Supply Chain Management, Institute for Supply Management, vol. 56(4), pages 3-24, October.
    10. Marco Caliendo & Alexander S. Kritikos & Claudia Stier, 2023. "The influence of start-up motivation on entrepreneurial performance," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 869-889, October.
    11. Jeremy Green & Colin Hay, 2015. "Towards a New Political Economy of the Crisis: Getting What Went Wrong Right," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 331-341, June.
    12. Ron Boschma & Ron Martin, 2010. "The Aims and Scope of Evolutionary Economic Geography," Chapters, in: Ron Boschma & Ron Martin (ed.), The Handbook of Evolutionary Economic Geography, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Jacob Hörisch & Jana Kollat & Steven A. Brieger, 2017. "What influences environmental entrepreneurship? A multilevel analysis of the determinants of entrepreneurs’ environmental orientation," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 48(1), pages 47-69, January.
    14. Johan Miörner & Elena Zukauskaite & Michaela Trippl & Jerker Moodysson, 2018. "Creating institutional preconditions for knowledge flows in cross-border regions," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(2), pages 201-218, March.
    15. Sarah Gerritsen & Sophia Harré & Boyd Swinburn & David Rees & Ana Renker-Darby & Ann E. Bartos & Wilma E. Waterlander, 2019. "Systemic Barriers and Equitable Interventions to Improve Vegetable and Fruit Intake in Children: Interviews with National Food System Actors," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-19, April.
    16. Ning, Jiajun & Xiong, Lixin, 2024. "Analysis of the dynamic evolution process of the digital transformation of renewable energy enterprises based on the cooperative and evolutionary game model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 288(C).
    17. Gavin Bridge & Ludger Gailing, 2020. "New energy spaces: Towards a geographical political economy of energy transition," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(6), pages 1037-1050, September.
    18. Fouladvand, Javanshir & Aranguren Rojas, Maria & Hoppe, Thomas & Ghorbani, Amineh, 2022. "Simulating thermal energy community formation: Institutional enablers outplaying technological choice," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PA).
    19. Huang, Zishuo & Yu, Hang & Chu, Xiangyang & Peng, Zhenwei, 2017. "A goal programming based model system for community energy plan," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 893-901.
    20. Gigante, Anna Azzurra, 2013. "Institutional Cognitive Economics: some recent developments," MPRA Paper 48278, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:22:p:10092-:d:1524424. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.