Networking at multiple levels to manage transitions to resource efficient mobility: A novel analytical framework drawing on the Multi-Level Perspective and the Industrial Interaction Framework

This conceptual paper presents a theoretical framework formulated to study justtransitions to sustainable transport, drawing on the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) tosustainability transitions, rooted in the sociology of innovations and on the IndustrialMarketing and Purchasing Interaction Framework (IMP-IF), rooted in the Industrialmarketing discipline. The discussion focuses on a low carbon transport offering,Mobility as a Service (MaaS). MaaS is a digital interface to source and manage theprovision of a transport related service(s) which meets the mobility requirements of acustomer in environmentally sustainable ways. The framework this paper proposesaims to address some of the limitations of the MLP, which is an historical perspective,with little attention to the agency of stakeholders in directing change and formingnetworks, by combining it with the IMP IF, which offers conceptual apparatus toanalyse these very processes.To illustrate how the proposed novel framework can be operationalized, the discussiondraws on Tesla Inc, a USA company providing Electric Vehicles (EV), as a case studybased on publicly available information. Tesla had to establish interconnectednetworks to enable a transition towards sustainable transport through EVs, to secure acapillary charging network to power their cars. The Tesla case study shows hownetworks can be established across the strategic niches and the socio-technicalregime and are performative, demonstrating the ability of the networks to shape themarket for this novel mobility offering and effectively demonstrate the use of theproposed framework.Powered