CO2 reduction through digital transformation in long-haul transportation: Institutional entrepreneurship to unlock product-service system innovation

Abstract

Industrial firms seek to develop offerings that can reduce their negative ecological impact while still being economically viable. Initial studies of these offerings focused on the what and the why. Only recently have studies addressed how to pursue these efforts. The literature generally ignores the underlying mechanisms of how such offerings are created and operated. This paper reports a longitudinal case study of an industrial firm's innovative offering. This offering combines heavy duty vehicles and related services for long-haul transportation. It enables road transportation firms to reduce fuel consumption by one quarter and thereby cut CO2 emissions and fuel costs. A multi-theoretical investigation of that offering contributes to the literature by providing: (i) a rich characterization of an industrial organization's offering that combines economic viability with a much lower negative environmental impact; (ii) a chain of underlying mechanisms that enable such an offering to emerge, including activation of institutional entrepreneurship for industrial entrepreneurship; and (iii) an articulation of the value of using multi-theoretical inquiries of ecological industrial offerings instead of seeking a new isolated theory.