French smart cities : which factors are key to manage a sustainable development?

Eurydice Bled , Igor Alvarez , David Carassus (1) , Jacques Jaussaud (1)

1 CREG - Centre de recherche et d'études en gestion

Despite the advent of local Agenda 21 in 1992, marking the beginning of local authorities' ownership of sustainable development, there is unanimous agreement that global environmental degradation will continue. It is therefore necessary to study the results of these Agenda 21s and to understand the factors for their successes and their failures. In this study, we first characterise local sustainable development under its four dimensions (environmental, social, economic, governance). Then we identify, in particular with the aid of neo-institutional and organisational contingency theories, its influencing factors. On this basis, we carried out a quantitative study on all French municipalities working with a local Agenda 21. The results show a mixed and unbalanced picture of sustainable development in the implementation of its four dimensions, and reveal the preponderance of technical and administrative leadership in the slowing down of the establishment of local sustainable development.

Keywords: sustainable development; smart cities; Local Agenda 21; new institutionalism; contingency

Domains: Business administration

Eurydice Bled, Igor Alvarez, David Carassus, Jacques Jaussaud. French smart cities : which factors are key to manage a sustainable development?. "Special Track : Sustainability Accounting and Monitoring for Smart Cities », 21st Conference of the Environmental and Sustainability Management Accounting Network (EMAN), Jun 2017, Liège, Belgium. ⟨hal-02142219⟩