Assessing the “Short Mental Distance” in Eco‐Industrial Networks

Abstract

Summary Like many economic exchanges, industrial symbiosis (IS) is thought to be influenced by social relationships and shared norms among actors in a network. While many implicit references to social characteristics exist throughout the literature, there have been few explicit attempts to operationalize and measure the concepts. The “short mental distance,”“trust,”“openness,” and “communication” recorded among managers in Kalundborg, Denmark, set a precedent for examining and encouraging social interactions among key personnel in the dozens of eco‐industrial networks around the world. In this article we explore the relationships among various aspects of social embeddedness, social capital, and IS. We develop a conceptual framework and an approach using quantitative and qualitative methods to identify and measure these social characteristics, including social network structure, communication, and similarities in norms and conceptions of waste, and apply them in an industrial network in Nanjangud, South India. The findings suggest that there is a fairly high level of shared norms about dealing with waste—the “short mental distance”—in this network, but by‐product transactions are only weakly correlated with the structure and content of communication among managers. Replication of this approach can increase the understanding and comparability of the role of social characteristics in eco‐industrial activities around the world.

Industrial symbiosis as sustainable development strategy: adding a change perspective

“…Comparison of the analysis of the common elements in the continuum approaches with the analyses of this framework shows that a more inclusive system analysis is possible than is performed in transition management and in the middle-out approach. Remarkably, many of the continuous conceptualisation of change that are covered in our case study are covered by the IS literature that incorporates social network analysis (Ashton, 2008;Ashton and Bain 2012;Howard-Grenville, 2009, 2012), or regional economic theories (Chertow, 2007;Deutz and Gibbs, 2008). Further, our examples of established or potential linkages indicate the necessity of a sheltered environment by means of trust (Gibbs, 2003) and short mental distances among the partners (Ashton and Bain, 2012;Paquin and Howard-Grenville, 2009).…”

“…Remarkably, many of the continuous conceptualisation of change that are covered in our case study are covered by the IS literature that incorporates social network analysis (Ashton, 2008;Ashton and Bain 2012;Howard-Grenville, 2009, 2012), or regional economic theories (Chertow, 2007;Deutz and Gibbs, 2008). Further, our examples of established or potential linkages indicate the necessity of a sheltered environment by means of trust (Gibbs, 2003) and short mental distances among the partners (Ashton and Bain, 2012;Paquin and Howard-Grenville, 2009). This analysis of the conceptualisation of change confirms the power of the theoretic multiplicity in IS (Boons and Howard Grenville, 2009): each theory has blind spots (Termeer and Dewulf, 2012) but together, they can cover the range of the episodic and continuous change conceptualisation.…”

“…Different authors conceptualise aspects that make the actual occurrence more likely, for example the possibilities of imagination (Cohen-Rosenthal, 2000), problem definition (Mirata and Emtaira, 2005), trust relationships (Gibbs, 2003), brokerage (Paquin and Howard-Grenville, 2009) and short mental distances (Ashton and Bain, 2012;Paquin and Howard-Grenville, 2009). This conceptual diversity is fed by different theoretical angles and backgrounds and is an enrichment of IS understanding (Boons and Howard-Grenville, 2009).…”

Comparing the effects of mutualism and competition on industrial districts

“…An industrial ecosystem constitutes not only a metabolic network formed by flows of energy and materials, but also formal and informal social networks with economic, contractual and social relationships through which information or money may be considered to flow (e.g. [13,14,15,16]). The structure, nature and development of each of these different networks are interconnected and influence that of the others.…”

Utilisation of Excess Heat Towards a Circular Economy: Implications of interorganisational collaborations and strategic planning

“…There are many forms of industrial symbiosis collaborations, a common classification is the division of planned and unplanned (Baas, 2011;Ashton and Bain, 2012;Hein et al, 2015). Unplanned industrial symbiosis is the basis for self-organisation, whereas planned industrial symbiosis refers to conscious efforts of identifying and locating companies from different industries in order to share resources across and among them (Chertow, 2007).…”