Sustainable Economies

Societal change and progress in an evolving world: Beyond the maximization logic and to the adoption of satisficing choices for sustainable development

Francesco Scalamonti — 2025-04-15

While globalization fosters convergence among nations, it also amplifies economic and political competition, altering balances and leading to recurrent crises within capitalism. The maximization logic alone is no longer tenable as a foundation for the decision-making process. The decisions taken by socioeconomic agents and characterized by bounded rationality, significantly influence dynamic change, and drive societal progress within the socioeconomic system—capitalism. Therefore, this conceptual paper aims to revitalize the debate on the transition from the maximization logic to the adoption of satisficing choices for sustainable development, placing itself within the open questions today on the new ways of conceiving the future, modernity, capitalism, and society. While adopting novel socio-economic paradigms may be challenging, sound governance remains crucial in addressing critical issues arising from globalization and capitalism’s autopoiesis. This paper may contribute to advancing the theoretical framework in the field of behavioral and social science by offering an insightful synthesis to better understand the complexity involved in designing effective well-being policies within a sustainable capitalistic system.

Technological improvement and economic growth: Evidence from employment generation in micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Bangladesh

Li Qi — 2025-05-28

The contribution of technological changes to economic growth in Bangladesh through the channel of employment, with a special focus on the Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) sector, is explored in this study. It examines how technological progress has helped Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises increase productivity, access new markets, and generate new jobs through secondary data from the World Bank and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). The analysis underlines the opportunities and challenges MSMEs face in implementing novelties in technology, including infrastructure, financial availability, and technical skills. Correlation between Gross domestic product (GDP) growth and technology adoption is found, meanwhile, the relationship between unemployment rates and technological innovation is found to be negative. While impressive government initiatives exist, a few obstacles exist to the broad diffusion of technologies at all levels, such as insufficient financial access and technological infrastructure. The study provides practical policy recommendations aimed at accelerating Bangladesh’s long-term development objectives, resolving extant barriers, and encouraging technology-driven growth.

Conscious economics: Reconstructing economic agency through rational egoism and ontological accountability

Jeffrey Overall — 2025-06-09

This article introduces conscious economics as a novel paradigm that integrates rational egoism with consciousness expansion to redefine economic agency as an ethically self-aware and developmentally oriented process. Drawing on Kohlberg’s cognitive moral development and Maslow’s self-transcendence, the framework positions ethical self-interest as a function of ontological integration, self-transcendence, and intergenerational accountability. In contrast to conventional models that treat ethical behavior as externally enforced or structurally constrained, conscious economics centers the cultivation of inner awareness as the foundation for sustainable value creation. The article contributes to knowledge in two primary ways. First, it reframes economic rationality through the lens of cognitive and spiritual development, thereby challenging dominant assumptions of moral neutrality in market behavior. Second, it introduces the construct of ontological accountability, which extends the temporal and metaphysical scope of economic decision-making. Through a synthesis of moral psychology, transpersonal development, and stakeholder ethics, this research advances a psychologically grounded and ethically robust model of capitalism capable of aligning individual flourishing with planetary and societal well-being. It concludes by identifying structural barriers to implementation and offers empirically grounded solutions rooted in moral cultivation, institutional redesign, and consciousness-based practices.

How innovation alliances promote technological innovation—Evidence from China’s new research & development institutes

Huidong Peng — 2025-06-16

Applied research institutes are crucial to technological progress. New Research & Development Institutes (NRDIs) are such a type of organization with Chinese styles. NRDIs participate in innovation alliances to promote technological innovation. Extant literature rarely explores innovation alliances’ influence on NRDIs. Based on social network theories, this research explains how innovation alliances affect NRDIs’ innovation performance. The analysis based on the panel data of 138 NRDIs in China’s Guangdong Province during 2017–2022 finds that innovation alliances’ number and diversity positively affect applied research institutes’ innovation performance. Also, internal financial resources negatively moderate the relationship between innovation alliances’ diversity and alliance members’ innovation performance.