Jonas Friedrich

This paper depicts smart city initiatives as hybrid organizations that incorporate competing institutional logics. These logics are not equally pronounced across initiatives. The salience of the logics affects initiatives’ selective coupling with economic, social, and environmental sustainability and, hence, their triple-layered sustainability performance. We suggest that the performance-related selective coupling is driven by two mechanisms: leveraging experience and seeking legitimacy. An empirical analysis of 251 initiatives supports our arguments. In line with the theory of selective coupling, we further find that initiatives embedded in a market logic display better overall sustainability performance than those embedded in a social welfare logic.

A reasonable future for Europe can only be achieved if two essential elements are fulfilled: Firstly, newly established institutions must be democratic and have strong support from citizens rather than from national governments. Secondly, the large number of different ethnic, cultural, religious, and regional units existing on the European continent must be able to maintain their identity. This diversity must be institutionally supported rather than be undermined by standardization and centralization. We suggest political institutions, which are formed to meet these goals, following the example of Functional, Overlapping, Competing Jurisdictions (FOCJ). If these two goals are adequately reached, a future alliance raises the identification with the European project, and induces citizens to exhibit civic virtue in strengthening these goals.