In response to criticisms about the status of causal explanation in socio-technical transitions research, this article elaborates the epistemological underpinnings of this emerging research field, mobilising insights from the wider social sciences where foundational debates have started to transform the understanding of causality and explanation. The article shows that socio-technical transitions are a special kind of research topic with phenomenological characteristics that pose challenges for mainstream explanatory formats and therefore warrant particular approaches to causality and explanation. It first discusses three philosophical positions on causality and explanation (positivism, pragmatism, critical realism), and concludes that critical realism is most suited to address phenomenological characteristics of socio-technical transitions. Elaborating the critical realist approach, the article then discusses the relevance of complex causalities (especially conjunctural, configurational, and event-chain causality) for explaining transitions and how existing transition frameworks (MLP, TIS, SNM) can improve their use of these causalities. The article subsequently discusses the role of theories in explanations (including heuristic roles), and the relevance of conceptual frameworks, causal mechanisms, process tracing and narrative explanation in socio-technical transitions research. Theoretical and methodological suggestions for improving transition research are provided throughout.

When firms are heterogeneous, externalities within clusters can affect firms asymmetrically. These asymmetries at the firm level lead to a productivity effect at the cluster level that has been overlooked thus far. We develop a heterogeneous firm model where firms with different productivity levels decide how much to invest in market survival. With this model, we find a differentiation between high-productivity firms investing in market survival and low-productivity firms not investing in market survival. Cluster externalities alter the optimal market survival investment of firms, which in turn affects both cluster composition and cluster-level outcomes. By focusing on cluster productivity and assuming that cluster externalities take the form of knowledge spillovers, we find that the effect on the cluster depends on the particular type of knowledge spillovers. Using modelling outcomes and an extensive numerical simulation, we show that knowledge spillovers that reduce the cost of investment benefit investing, high-productivity firms and increase cluster productivity. By contrast, knowledge spillovers that imply that non-investing, low-productivity firms can free ride on the efforts of investing firms tend to reduce cluster productivity. We discuss ramifications for research on clusters and cluster policy, highlighting the importance of industry and knowledge spillover characteristics.

In current debates about job automation, technology adoption is framed as a politics-neutral decision driven by the search for technical efficiency. Discussions about the nature of job design (i.e. the content and distribution of tasks within firms) and its associated automation risk are usually devoid of institutional context. However, job design may be affected by the way firms are governed. A critical feature of workplace governance is the extent to which decision making is shared by capital owners and workers via institutionalized forms of employee representation (ER). In this paper, we propose an evolutionary model to study the complementary fit and endogenous dynamics of job design and workplace governance. We show that two technological-political conventions are likely to emerge: in one of them workplace governance is based on ER and job designs have low automation risk; in the other, ER is absent and workers are involved in automation-prone production tasks. We explore the validity of the theory by using data from a large sample of European workers including detailed information on occupations, task environment, working conditions as well as presence of ER. Results are consistent with the theory: automation risk is negatively associated with the presence of ER. Our analysis can be useful to rationalize the historical experience of Nordic countries, where simultaneous experimentation with codetermination rights and job enrichment programs (supplemented by nationwide institutional reforms) seem to have had enduring consequences in the way these countries confront technological challenges. Policy debates about automation should avoid technological determinism and devote more attention to socio-institutional factors shaping the future of work.