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This paper presents an assessment of how the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is stimulating change in water and wastewater management. The paper aims to provide an organisational innovation contribution towards understanding the processes by which policy and legislation stimulate change in water and wastewater systems. Results were produce...
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Context 1
... reviewing the literature on innovation manage- ment, and knowledge transfer, it is apparent that Rogers' model represents one articulation of what can be seen as a consensus over the process stages involved in intra-organisational change. Table 1 collates some of this literature for the reader who is unfamiliar with it, showing where similarities and differences in the characteristics of the stages of the process exist, and how there is broad agreement on the overall structure, sequence and outcomes of the process. The stages of the process identified by each author which are essentially equivalent in outcome are shown on the same row in Table 1 e.g. ...
Context 2
... 1 collates some of this literature for the reader who is unfamiliar with it, showing where similarities and differences in the characteristics of the stages of the process exist, and how there is broad agreement on the overall structure, sequence and outcomes of the process. The stages of the process identified by each author which are essentially equivalent in outcome are shown on the same row in Table 1 e.g. 'awareness', 'acquisition', 'search', 'gathering information' and ideas on a 'problem' and 'agenda setting' stages. ...
Context 3
... WaSCs were concerned that more stringent requirements for nutrient removal are likely to arise as a result of the WFD objective to achieve 'good ecological status' for water bodies. Some companies pointed towards the need to invest in technologies for phosphorous and nitrogen removal (Table 1). Other companies expressed their concerns about the uncer- tainty of required standards and treatment technolo- gies. ...
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Citations
... However, the results of the past 9 years have shown a gradual upward trend, which also confirms that the water sector has invested more energy and funds in service satisfaction and achieved results [43], see Fig. 3. The increase in satisfaction is driven more by the privatisation system of the water sector, which makes water companies and the water sector more motivated to treat wastewater before it is discharged [79][80][81]. Many water users are willing to pay the corresponding water fees, providing specific financial support for the water sector for sewage treatment because this is closely related to their lives. ...
At present, many studies have used social survey methods to explore UK water citizens’ perceptions of the water sector’s water services, but there are few more targeted and systematic studies. This paper mainly displays the perceptions of UK water citizens on water services in the water sector in recent years and analyses the main reasons for different perceptions and possible strategies. We conduct extensive research from four aspects that are highly related to water services: water citizens’ perceptions of the water supply services and technology application (infrastructure construction) provided by the water sector; the state of communication between the water sector and water citizens and their perceptions of water supply management; water citizens’ perceptions of the comprehensive utilisation of water resources in the water sector; water citizens’ perceptions of the water prices set by the water sector. These discussions aim to discover citizens’ perceptions of the water sector and the effects on the public participation mechanism. These insights help attract the water sector’s attention so that the public’s opinions can genuinely support water policymakers and provide sure support for the water sector to formulate corresponding solutions.
... McShane et al. (2011) and Sandker et al. (2012) have recommended that an appropriate model for effective knowledge integration should enable the achievement of the following objectives: i) promote collaborative research-facilitator community teams, ii) integrate local and scientific knowledge, iii) help community and policy makers improve their living standards, iv) expand biodiversity payment schemes, v) develop multiple landuse plans, and vi) engage fully the stakeholders together in multiple land use policies. Besides, several integration frameworks have been developed in the past by scholars such as Gaillard and Mercer (2012), Sousa (2013), Spiller et al. (2012) all aimed at integrating indigenous technical knowledge and universal conservation knowledge. Despite the existing frameworks being participatory in nature and adopting the use of conventional methods of data collection including interviews, observation and review of documented information relating to a chosen local community, Shrestha and Medley (2016) submit that such models have not been very successful in achieving sustainability in natural resources management since they have tended to remain Westernized-Scientific in nature with inadequate local community participation. ...
... Indicators have been shown to be valuable for guiding system changes by: reducing ambiguity and enabling effective and clear communication amongst diverse interests ( McCool and Stankey, 2004 ); assessing and quantifying performance ( Spiller et al., 2012 ); providing early warnings ( Spiller et al., 2012 ); giving feedback on the effects of policies ( Chiras and Corson, 1997 ;Swanson et al., 2010 ), and co-constructing visions and evaluating pathways towards desired societal change ( Lehtonen et al., 2016 ). However, the assessment of city sustainability is not a well-established practice ( Marques et al., 2015 ), the conditions for assessing city sustainability are ambiguous ( Mori and Christodoulou, 2012 ), and there is misalignment between future city visions and available performance indicators ( Renouf et al., 2017 ). ...
... Indicators have been shown to be valuable for guiding system changes by: reducing ambiguity and enabling effective and clear communication amongst diverse interests ( McCool and Stankey, 2004 ); assessing and quantifying performance ( Spiller et al., 2012 ); providing early warnings ( Spiller et al., 2012 ); giving feedback on the effects of policies ( Chiras and Corson, 1997 ;Swanson et al., 2010 ), and co-constructing visions and evaluating pathways towards desired societal change ( Lehtonen et al., 2016 ). However, the assessment of city sustainability is not a well-established practice ( Marques et al., 2015 ), the conditions for assessing city sustainability are ambiguous ( Mori and Christodoulou, 2012 ), and there is misalignment between future city visions and available performance indicators ( Renouf et al., 2017 ). ...
Cities are wrestling with the practical challenges of transitioning urban water services to become water sensitive; capable of enhancing liveability, sustainability, resilience and productivity in the face of climate change, rapid urbanisation, degraded ecosystems and ageing infrastructure. Indicators can be valuable for guiding actions for improvement, but there is not yet an established index that measures the full suite of attributes that constitute water sensitive performance. This paper therefore presents the Water Sensitive Cities (WSC) Index, a new benchmarking and diagnostic tool to assess the water sensitivity of a municipal or metropolitan city, set aspirational targets and inform management responses to improve water sensitive practices. Its 34 indicators are organised into seven goals: ensure good water sensitive governance, increase community capital, achieve equity of essential services, improve productivity and resource efficiency, improve ecological health, ensure quality urban spaces, and promote adaptive infrastructure. The WSC Index design is a quantitative framework based on qualitative rating descriptions and a participatory assessment methodology, enabling local contextual interpretations of the indicators while maintaining a robust universal framework for city comparison and benchmarking. The paper demonstrates its application on three illustrative cases. Rapid uptake of the WSC Index in Australia highlights its value in helping stakeholders develop collective commitment and evidence-based priorities for action to accelerate their city's water sensitive transition. Early testing in cities in Asia, the Pacific and South Africa has also showed the potential of the WSC Index internationally.
... Additionally, the monopolistic/single concession nature of the water sector limits competitive pressures, providing little incentive to utilities for investing in innovation, as long as they guarantee reliable, efficient, and adequate water services (Tutusaus, Schwartz, & Smit, 2018). However, increases in environmental events such as droughts, limited or heavy rainfalls, pollution, or contamination of water resources are challenging water utilities in Mediterranean countries to reconsider traditional water management approaches and to look for radically new solutions to resolve social and environmental conflicts (Romano, Salvati, & Guerrini, 2014;Spiller, McIntosh, Seaton, & Jeffrey, 2012). For this reason, MAR systems represent a radical innovation in aquifer management. ...
This paper explores which are the drivers and their interactions that can lead organizations to adopt radical sustainable innovation (SI) in unfavorable contexts. We identify external and internal drivers of SI adoption, and we conceptualize sustainable intrapreneurship as an additional driver. We report and discuss the findings from a case study in the water sector based on interviews and secondary data collected among eleven water utilities in Israel, Italy, and Spain. We provide new insights on how interactions between external and internal drivers can generate dynamic cycles that gradually shift utilities from a reactive to an embedding and system change approach in adopting SI. Within this process, networks and sustainable intrapreneurship act as interactive drivers that catalyze internal and external drivers. The study links testable propositions in a conceptual model describing the dynamics triggering SI adoption and argues for the relevance of sustainable intrapreneurship for addressing the systemic nature, complexity, and ambiguity of SI adoption.
... Future research to support European, federal, and local wastewater policy is needed. Such research should, ideally, be culturally-sensitive and comparative in nature, as recommended by (Spiller, McIntosh, and Seaton, 2012). Interdisciplinary research, such as studies spanning hydrology and geography or spatial planning, could critically explore and quantify the merits or drawbacks of specific water protection projects. ...
Because EU water quality policy can result in infrastructure creation or adaptation at the local level across member states, compliance cases are worth examining critically from a sustainable spatial planning perspective. In this study, the 2000 EU Water Framework Directive’s (WFD) reach to local implementation efforts in average towns and cities is shown through the case study of non-conforming household wastewater infrastructure in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Seeing wastewater as a socio-technical infrastructure, we ask how the WFD implementation can be understood in the context of local infrastructure development, sustainability, and spatial planning concepts. In particular, this study examines what compliance meant for the centralization or decentralization of local wastewater infrastructure systems—and the sustainability implications for cities from those choices.
... The water industry has been notoriously slow to implement change, often embracing tradition 34 and conservative treatment technologies (Speight, 2015;Tanner et al., 2016;Thomas, 2012;35 Thomas & Ford, 2006;Thomas & Ford, 2008). The barriers affecting the water sector's 36 ability to adopt innovative technologies has been explored by a number authors (Speight, 37 2015;Spiller et al., 2015;Spiller et al., 2012;Tanner et al., 2016;Thomas, 2012;Thomas & 38 Ford, 2006). They found that key barriers to innovation in the UK water industry include the 39 excessive time it takes for innovations to become adopted within the water sector , the 40 industry's risk-averse attitudes, and a lack of knowledge about new and emerging 41 technologies ( Spiller et al., 2012;Tanner et al., 2016;Thomas, 2012;Thomas & Ford, 2006). ...
... The barriers affecting the water sector's 36 ability to adopt innovative technologies has been explored by a number authors (Speight, 37 2015;Spiller et al., 2015;Spiller et al., 2012;Tanner et al., 2016;Thomas, 2012;Thomas & 38 Ford, 2006). They found that key barriers to innovation in the UK water industry include the 39 excessive time it takes for innovations to become adopted within the water sector , the 40 industry's risk-averse attitudes, and a lack of knowledge about new and emerging 41 technologies ( Spiller et al., 2012;Tanner et al., 2016;Thomas, 2012;Thomas & Ford, 2006). 42 ...
Process Intensification (PI) refers to the use of novel process technologies to achieve significant (order of magnitude) size reduction in individual unit operations, or the complete removal of process steps by performing multiple functions in fewer steps. This should lead to significant reductions in capital and running costs, and improvements in process efficiency and safety. There are numerous examples of PI being successfully implemented in the oil and gas, pharmaceutical, food and drink, and fine chemical industries, but few in the water industry. There are however a range of drivers for process intensification within the water industry. These include ever more stringent environmental standards and more intractable pollutants. The aim of this review was to identify PI technologies that could be used in the future UK water industry, but require further technical development (to increase their TRL), or transfer from other industries. Recommendations for technologies are given, as well as routes to their implementation.
... Thus, water problems at global and national scales demonstrate the complex aspect of water management and vital need to implement integrated approaches to reach a sustainable solution. Since Dublin Principles of 1992 and studies carried out on the concepts of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), water educators have been highlighting the need for focusing on more efficient understanding of institutional and educational changes, instead of technological improvements, as an approach to reach sustainability goals [Brown and Farrelly, 2009;Spiller et al., 2012;Thomas and Ford 2005;Kirshen et al., 2004]. Moreover, the importance of filling the gap between education, research and application in developing countries is widely discussed in the literature [e.g. ...
In the last decades, the world has been facing major water-related challenges due to growing population, water overuse and climate change. Moreover, projections show that these challenges could become more intense and pervasive in the near future so that less developed and developing countries would turn more vulnerable to water-related crises. On the other hand, to confront water challenges, the demand for graduate water education is increasing. In such condition, there is a vital need to build more capacity via water education through adopting curricula which are more innovation oriented, multidisciplinary and consistent with IWRM principles. This paper presents a brief review on how water education issues are addressed in the previous studies and discusses the capacity building needs. Also, a comparative investigation is conducted on two major graduate water engineering sub-disciplines in Iran. In the end, recommendations are presented for making graduate water education curricula more effective and flexible.
... The latter tend to pay off more easily for transactions of high frequency, another characteristic of transactions. Williamson mentions two further characteristics, excludability and subtractability (Ostrom, 2005) (or rivalry in consumption), though rarely, because he generally focuses on private goods (Williamson, 1985;Williamson, 1991; for an exception see Spiller et al., 2012;Williamson, 1999). Here, we argue that our approach of transferring TCE to the analysis of nr-ts in SESwhich often involve provision of public goods and common-pool resourcescan make some headway in this domain. ...
Institutional fit is operationalized by transferring transaction costs economics (TCE) to the analysis of instances of social-ecological interdependence. We carefully spell out the differences with conventional TCE and outline analytical steps based on discriminating alignment that enable a TCE analysis of environmental governance of “nature-related transactions”. We illustrate the approach through the example of wildlife management in Germany. Here we find hierarchical governance (a prohibition) of killing of wolves embedded into a polycentric hybrid monitoring arrangement. In applying TCE to nature-related transactions, we argue that characteristics of nature-related transactions can be subsumed under the core categories of jointness, uncertainty, asset specificity, frequency, rivalry, excludability and social-relational distance. Benefits of this approach include its generating a narrow list of descriptors of instances of biophysically mediated interdependence related to one evaluation criterion: cost-effectiveness. The TCE of nature-related transactions thus identifies sets of stylized contextual factors and aspects related to the governance of hazards of ex-post opportunistic behavior that cut across scales. They can be used as composite descriptors that facilitate analysis of complex multi-scalar arrangements of natural resource governance. We propose the concept of ‘governance challenge’, derived from TCE, as being useful for building research on environmental governance.
... The conceptual framework comprises three key elements (Fig. 1): a) the 5 stage overall organisational model of the innovation process, b) the intra-stage process of diagnosis and evaluation and choice and c) the set of factors that influence each stage of the process. Spiller et al. (2012Spiller et al. ( , 2013b) reviewed a range of organisational innovation processes described in the literature. These processes commonly start with the 'realisation of a need for change' and progress to the 'use and implementation' of the innovation finally selected. ...
... These processes commonly start with the 'realisation of a need for change' and progress to the 'use and implementation' of the innovation finally selected. Spiller et al. (2012Spiller et al. ( , 2013b and more recently Karakaya et al. (2014) conclude that the well-known innovation model of Rogers'(2003) is a useful starting point for conceptualising the structure of environmental innovation processes at the organisational scale. Rogers' model is divided into five sequential stages beginning with Agenda Setting (Fig. 1a). ...
Innovations in technology and organisations are central to enabling the water sector to adapt to major environmental changes such as climate change, land degradation or drinking water pollution. While there are literatures on innovation as a process and on the factors that influence it, there is little research that integrates these. Development of such an integrated understanding of innovation is central to understanding how policy makers and organisations can stimulate and direct environmental innovation. In the research reported here a framework is developed that enables such an integrated analysis of innovation process and factors. From research interviews and the literature twenty factors were identified that affect the five stages of the environmental innovation process in English and Welsh water utilities. The environmental innovations investigated are measures taken by water utilities to reduce or prevent pollution in drinking water catchments rather than technical measures to treat water. These Source Control Interventions are similar to other environmental innovations, such as ecosystem and species conservation, in that they emphasise the mix of technology, management and engagement with multiple actors. Results show that in water utilities direct performance regulation and regula-tion that raises awareness of a 'performance' gap as a 'problem' can stimulate innovation, but only under particular organisational, natural physical and regulatory conditions. The integrated framework also suggests that while flexible or framework legislation (e.g. Water Framework Directive) does not stimulate innovation in itself, it has shaped the option spaces and characteristics of innovations selected towards source control instead of technical end-of-pipe solutions.
... The extent to which knowledge transfer has occurred in the new context is important to evaluating the HELP approach, and individual and organizational receptivity are necessary precedents for this to occur. The most relevant knowledge-transfer steps to HELP have been: modification of new approaches to match local needs; diffusion of approaches across organizations; and mainstreaming and sustaining new knowledge and approaches (Spiller, McIntosh, Seaton, & Jeffrey, 2012;Rogers, 2003). ...
... In any knowledge-transfer process, modification and reinnovation are common steps as ideas are adapted from concept into practice (Spiller et al., 2012). Findings from the online survey and semi-structured interviews indicate that implementation of HELP in Davao remains closely aligned with original UNESCO objectives, with local innovation also occurring. ...
... Mainstreaming of knowledge is one of the later stages in a knowledge-transfer process (Spiller et al., 2012). The creation of evidence-based policy to enable the mainstreaming of new knowledge and technologies is an established strategy in the management of natural resources (Falkenmark et al., 2004;Pretty & Ward, 2001). ...
Meaningful engagement of diverse stakeholders is essential for ensuring support for science-based responses to complex watershed challenges. A collaborative network in the Davao river basins, in the Philippines, provides evidence of an approach that enabled integration of science into local decision making and increased bonding social capital between shared-interest groups. Insufficient attention towards bridging and linking social capital allowed bottlenecks between policy and implementation to persist. This ‘dark side’ of social capital was evidenced by entrenched sector positions and lower levels of trust between different interest groups. A social-learning approach is recommended to create new spaces for productive ‘bridging’ relationships.
