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Sustainable development in a transition economy: business case studiesfrom Poland

Jakub Kronenberg a,*, Tomasz Bergier b,1

a University of Lodz, Department of International Economics, P.O.W. 3/5, 90-255 Lodz, PolandbAGH University of Science and Technology, Department of Environmental Management and Protection, Mickiewicza 30, 30-059 Krakow, Poland

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 28 October 2010Received in revised form4 November 2011Accepted 8 December 2011Available online 16 December 2011

Keywords:

Sustainable developmentDrivers of sustainabilityBarriers to sustainabilityCorporate social responsibilityTransition economyPoland

a b s t r a c t

In general, examples from developed countries are cited when making reference to good practice insustainable development, while there is limited access to case studies from transition economies. Ouraim is to analyse case studies from Poland, which has recently undergone the transition to a market-based economy, in order to identify and critically assess both the drivers of and barriers to sustainabledevelopment in Polish business. By demonstrating that evidence of good practice is available withinPoland, we also aim to motivate key stakeholders to follow these examples in an addition to importingpractice from developed countries. Together the 11 case studies analysed in the article demonstrate thatwhile constraints exist to sustainable development there are nonetheless positive examples of bestpractice from which to learn. This review therefore complements other studies conducted on sustainabledevelopment in transition economies by indicating that lessons can be drawn on promoting sustainabledevelopment within this context and in other similar states undergoing economic, political and socialtransition.

2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Over the last two decades sustainable development has becomea worldwide discourse, driven by international agreements, globalenvironmental governance and bodies such as the European Union(EU). However, practice varies signicantly between states, withsome performing better than others. Poland is widely perceived asa country that performs poorly with regard to sustainable devel-opment or environmental protection, similar to other transitioneconomies. This is further strengthened by the fact that in Polanddiscussions related to sustainable development most often invokeforeign case studies. As a result, one may have an impression that

there is not much to talk about with reference to sustainabledevelopment in Poland and that sustainable development is notour problem but a problem of those countries from which thediscussed casestudies originate. Meanwhile, the situation in Polandis improving and there already are a number of interesting casestudies illustrating the drivers and barriers to sustainable devel-opment in the country. This resembles the situation depicted by our

famous Renaissance poet, Miko1aj Rej (1505e1569), who was therst one to start writing in Polish while others had only written inLatin (translated by M.J. Mikos):

Among other nations let it always be knownThat the Poles are not geese, have a tongue of their own.

In our view, using Polish case studies can help to promotesustainable development in Poland further and to understandbetter the drivers and barriers to sustainability. Case studies fromthe same country or region are easier to replicate and thus moreuseful for those who would like to use them in practice (Brown andAngel, 2000). Finally, decision makers often perceive case studies as

more informative and convincing than formal models and thusthese two sources of information should be perceived as comple-mentary (George and Bennett, 2005).

Using this perspective, our objective was to depict the state ofsustainable development in a country that has undergone a tran-sition from a centrally planned to a market economy and to drawrecommendations for other countries that are still in this transitionprocess. In the following sections we rst review the literature insearch of the already identied drivers and barriers to sustain-ability in a transition economy to illustrate the context withinwhich Polish companies operate. Then we focus on Polish casestudies selected specically for this research project. The project

* Corresponding author. Tel.:48 42 635 53 53; fax: 48 42 633 08 57.E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Kronenberg), [email protected]

(T. Bergier).1 Tel.: 48 12 617 47 57; fax: 48 12 633 50 76.

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c om / l o c a t e / j c l e p r o

0959-6526/$e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.010

Journal of Cleaner Production 26 (2012) 18e27
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09596526http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcleprohttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.010http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.010http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.010http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.010http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.010http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.12.010http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jcleprohttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09596526mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]

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was carried out under the auspices of the Sendzimir Foundationthat deals primarily with sustainability education in Poland andother countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). To keep in linewith the main focus of this journal, we limit our review to casestudies that reect sustainability in business.

2. Literature review

The countries of CEE have received a great deal of attention inthe last 20 years as examples of the process of economic and socialtransition (Lipton et al., 1990; Barr, 1994; Gros and Steinherr, 1995;Columbus, 1998). Much attention has also been paid by academicsto the environmental dimension of this transformation(Juergensmeyer et al., 1990; Alcamo, 1992; Carter and Turnock,1993; Vari and Tamas, 1993; Klarer and Moldan, 1997; Tickle andWelsh, 1998; Pavlnek and Pickles, 2000; Oldeld and Tickle,2002; Scrieciu and Stringer, 2008). Within the publications citedabove, the focus has principally been on the severity of environ-mental problems and how they might be solved. Much less focushas been made on sustainable development itself (Bolan andBochniarz, 1994; Bochniarz and Toft, 1995; OECD, 2004).

For the convenience of an international readership, we have

restricted this literature review to English language publications,keeping in mind the multitude of other relevant publications,available in Polish and other national languages. In doing so, wehave attempted to isolate the most important aspects and drivers ofsustainable development in Poland and other transition economiesthat we are later able to contrast with the case studies.

Although since its accession to the EU in 2004 Poland is nolonger classied as a transition economy, it used to serve as a primeexample of this type of economy because of its size and the relatedrange of economic, social and environmental problems that wereexperienced. Today, the experience of Poland is often presented aspotentially useful for other countries still on their path to transition,such as the South and East European countries or those in theCommonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Moreover, the poten-

tial to learn from Polish experience has also been cited in relationtosustainable development (Koz1owski and Ha1adyj, 2006).

Although countries of CEE have many similarities with regard tosustainability issues, they also differ, for example in terms of theirenvironmental impacts, with some notorious examples evident,such as Belarus and the CIS countries in general (Costi, 1998;Ichikawa et al., 2002; Kluvnkov-Oravsk et al., 2009). Thesedifferences among the transition economies were partly a result oftheir different histories and different approaches to their trans-formation. In the following analysis, we focus our attention onPoland, keeping in mind that many features of the describedtransition period have been shared by other countries of the region.

Abuse of the environment during the communist era (Scrieciuand Stringer, 2008) and massive neglect during the trans-

formation led to severe environmental problems (Kurek et al.,2001). A good example was the so-called Black Triangle, oncea heavily polluted area on the Polish-German-Czech border char-acterized by chronic air and water pollution (Markert et al., 1996;Ladysz, 2006). This negative industrial legacy was compoundedby inadequate environmental institutions which subsequentlyneeded redesigning in order to realize sustainable development(Cummings, 1992; _Zylicz, 1992; Bochniarz and Toft, 1995; Slocockand Sowinski, 1996). In a sign of an institutional improvement, in1997, the principle of sustainable development was incorporatedinto the Polish Constitution (art. 5) and in 2000 the governmentadopted its Sustainable Development Strategy Poland 2025 (GCSS/MoE, 2000). However, in 2007 the document was repealed with theaim to replace the strategy with a new one which would be fully

compatible with the EU requirements. To date, a new strategy has

yet to be created. This situation typies the many problems con-cerning achieving sustainable development in Poland. Although theproblems are being solved, at least partially, new problems emerge.Additionally, the old ones often recur as many had not been solvedin a comprehensive manner.

2.1. Positive issues

Many of the old environmental problems were partly solved bythe economic transformation itself as the decline in industrialactivity reduced pollution, and the need to withstand competitionforced an increase in resource and energy efciency (Ichikawaet al., 2002; Scrieciu and Stringer, 2008). The positive trendswere reinforced by relatively good environmental regulationsystem that was presented as an example for other transition anddeveloping countries to follow (Brown and Angel, 2000; Brownet al., 2000).

New nancial instruments for environmental protection weredeveloped during the transition period in Poland ( _Zylicz, 1995,1999; Peszko and _Zylicz, 1998), some of which have experiencedspectacular success, such as the Polish EcoFund (OECD,1998, 2007;

Nowicki and Sitnicki, 2007). The EcoFund managed the Polishdebt-for-nature swaps and has managed to raise over half a billion USD,more than all other debt-for-nature swaps in the world puttogether. Other sources of external funding were also available toease the pain of the transition period (Costi, 1998), including thosefrom the UN system and private donors. Economic openness in thecountry resulted in foreign direct investment which often led toreplicating good practice developed in foreign markets in Polandand helped to further restructure Polish companies. With thisregard, investors needed to pay attention to the environmentalaspects of privatization of Polish state-owned companies and therelated liabilities (Cummings, 1993; Kristiansen, 1996).

On the one hand, the transition process was facilitated by theperspective of EU membership, the related pre-accession funding

and also pressure to comply with EU regulations (Tickle and Clarke,2000; Ichikawa et al., 2002; Carmin and VanDeveer, 2005;Kluvnkov-Oravsk et al., 2009; Tews, 2009). Indeed, as early aswhen EU accession negotiations for Poland and several other CEEcountries started in 1997, the European Commission suggested thatthe environment was an area where a special effort was required toadopt the acquis communautaire (Costi,1998).On the other hand, itwas occasionally noted that the EU itself might learn from theexperiences of its new member states, for example from the use ofcertain nancial instruments for environmental protection(Jehlicka and Tickle, 2005).2

On the social side, it is also important to note that during thecommunist period the protests against environmental problemswere often closely related to resistance against the old political

system (Matczak, 1999). In the 1990s in Poland, society was activein protesting against municipal facilities, such as landlls or roads(Matczak, 1999), however rather than relating to their environ-mental awareness, this related to the not-in-my-backyard(NIMBY) syndrome. Attempts have been made to involve localstakeholders in the development planning processes(Magnuszewski et al., 2005; Gorzelak et al., 2008) and in general,regional and local sustainable development planning has graduallybecome relatively more common (Grochowalska, 1998; Gorzelak

2 Conversely, EU pressure has also been accused of not being accustomed to theparticular conditions and possibilities of various countries, constituting a newcentralized regime (Scrieciu and Stringer, 2008) and it has not taken into consid-eration the opportunities to learn from and adapt the solutions developed in the

candidate countries (Christiansen and Tangen, 2002).

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et al., 2008). An important role in the transition to sustainability hasalso been played by NGOs (Cent et al., 2007).

Much change has occurred thanks to the following of goodpractice from developed countries (Line and Braun, 2007), some-times through international support programmes and sometimesthanks to the involvement of individuals who had gained experi-ence in other countries. This took place primarily in the businesssector, in reference to concepts such as cleaner production(Markowski, 1993; Nowak, 1994, 1996; Doniec et al., 2002;Kronenberg and Clift, 2004), life cycle assessment (LCA) (Klos,1999; Lewandowska and Foltynowicz, 2004; Kowalski et al.,2007; Kulczycka, 2009; Kulczycka et al., 2011) and corporatesocial responsibility (CSR) (Gasparski, 2005; Lewicka-Strza1ecka,2006; Mielechow and Piskalski, 2009; Anam, 2010; Kronenbergand Mieszkowicz, 2011). New trends have also occurred in refer-ence to consumption patterns (Mrz, 2010), where imitating theWest brought both excessive consumption but also to some extenta more responsible form of consumption.

Finally, it is worth noting that some of the solutions developedduring the communist era and in the early stages of transition werealso successful, notably with reference to nature protection(Scrieciu and Stringer, 2008; Kluvnkov-Oravsk et al., 2009), but

also with reference to production (Gille, 2000; Grdzelishvili andSathre, 2007). Therefore, it would be a mistake to completelyreject the developments that took place during the previouspolitical system.

2.2. Potential unresolved problems

In spite of the positive factors identied above, some seriousproblems related to sustainable development keep occurring inPoland. Most notably those that involve nature protection and theso-called environment or developmentdilemma, for example thegeneral discussion regarding the selection of Natura 2000 sites inPoland (Grodzinska-Jurczak and Cent, 2011). Various problems ofthis kind, often involving companies as a side in a conict, have

been reported in the literature along with the attempts made tosolve them ( _Zylicz, 2000; Krolikowska et al., 2007; Kluvnkov-Oravsk et al., 2009). Other notorious problems emerged withregard to the quota for cod shing in the Baltic Sea that was beingdisobeyed by Polish shermen (Kronenberg, 2010), and in relationto the division of emission permits within the EU. With such anapproach to sustainable development and environmental policy,Poland has often undertaken these activities only after being forcedto by EU rules (Kronenberg and Maliszewska, 2004; Kronenberg,2007).

Problems have been blamed on an insufcient level of aware-ness of the rationale for and possibilities offered by sustainabledevelopment among Poles and Polish decision makers. A poor useof information instruments as part of environmental or sustainable

development policy has been sometimes explained by a lack ofdemand for information which has resulted in poor environmentalawareness by citizens. As explained byBanas (2010): ignorance ofthe value of information is the most likely factor inuencing theinformation owonboth sides.

Structural changes during the transition period have also led toserious social consequences, in particular those related to unem-ployment and social exclusion of marginalized groups withinsociety. These issues were also related to the poor quality of socialcapital in Poland. Deterioration of social capital that took placeduring the communist period, and of trust in particular (Danchev,2005; Bielski, 2010), has been another barrier to sustainabledevelopment. For example, this makes it difcult for NGOs tobecome involved in solving various problems as state agencies

avoid dialogue and citizens often do not trust either the authorities

or NGOs (Kluvnkov-Oravsk et al., 2009; Tews, 2009; Bielski,2010). Similar complications, including poor institutions, socialproblems resulting in a difcult situation in the job market and therelative weakness of NGOs, have also created barriers to thedevelopment of CSR in Poland (Lewicka-Strza1ecka, 2006; Line andBraun, 2007).

Moreover, while the old environmental problems were beingsolved, new problems appeared, such as increased consumptionlevels and the related pressure on the environment, includingincreased waste production and car trafc(Pavlnek and Pickles,2005; Scrieciu and Stringer, 2008). Clearly, basic needs had to besatised before people were able to start thinking about otherissues, such as the environment (Costi, 1998). This phenomenon isbroadly known as the environmental Kuznets curve (Archibaldet al., 2009), also relevant in the broader case of sustainability. Itoffers an useful explanation of the path of development in post-communist countries in which the sudden collapse of theprevious political system and a subsequent focus on economictransition, market and consumption made it difcult to considerother issues. Only gradually did other priorities emerge, such asimproving institutional governance and societal demand forresponsible corporate behavior. Often it was the lack of knowledge

or awareness rather than consumer indifference that preventedconsumers from voting with their purses(Rok et al., 2007). Thelack of criticism and discourse with companies is partly inheritedfrom the communist era and similarly the media often fail to holdcompanies accountable for their irresponsible behavior (Line andBraun, 2007).

As consumer demand for sustainability is still relatively low,Polish companies are not particularly active in the area of CSR norsustainability, both in the case of large companies (Aluchna, 2010)and SMEs (Bienkiewicz, 2007). CSR or sustainability issues havefallen most often within the obligations of PR departments who didnot have enough experience and understanding (not to mentiondecision making power) to integrate sustainability issues into allspheres of business activity (Rok et al., 2007). The activity of large

companies is most often restricted to simple and relatively visiblecharities and very rarely do they attempt to solve different social orenvironmental problems in their surroundings (Aluchna, 2010).This is further reected in the low innovativeness of the bestpracticesinCSR promoted by the Responsible Business Forum (e.g.FOB, 2010).

2.3. Review summary

The above drivers and barriers that affected sustainability inPoland during the transition period are summarized inTable 1. Inaddition,Fig. 1presents a mental map of the current situation asa system diagram. On the left side of the diagram, there are

external drivers of sustainability in Polish business. This list isshorter than that inTable 1because it only includes variables ofhigh importance in the current post-transition situation. Theright side of the diagram consists of four variables, which createthe reinforcing feedback loops, thus having key inuence on theanalysed system. In the current situation, all these variables arein a relatively low state, and instead of promoting sustainability,they hinder it and limit the inuence of the positive factors fromthe left side of the diagram. It is crucial to overcome this stag-nation and work on these key variables to improve the situationin these aspects. This will allow the system to change its current,disadvantageous state, and thanks to the reinforcing character ofthese feedback loops the positive effects will be amplied. One ofthose key variables is Polish good practice e the subject of our

study.

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3. Case studies and lessons learnt

3.1. Method

We collected and analysed a number of Polish case studies thatreect various sustainability-related issues. Apart fromhavingpurely

academic objectives, the project aimed at promoting sustainabledevelopment among Polish decision makers and other professionals.For this reason we focused on case studies that mostly reect goodpractice and address the barriers to spreading the positive examples.We assumed that national case studies have a higher potential topersuade and inspire stakeholders from Poland and other CEEcountries, compared with foreign case studies. The transfer of expe-rience and good practice from developed countries to Polandencountered several limitations because of their different conditionsand history. Besides, many examples and practices from developedcountries are already well documented, while there are only a fewworks on those from CEE, most of them in native languages, thus oflimited use for readers in other countries of the region.

There are few publications in which case studies are used to

illustrate the situation of business sustainability in Poland(Bienkiewicz, 2007; FOB, 2010). However, most of them list anddescribe the variety of activities related separately to: environ-mental protection, human resources management, optimization ofproduction or management, and particularly often public relations;areas that are connected with sustainable development, but that do

not show its complex essence and potential. Furthermore, the mostwidely known good practices are sometimes isolated from the coreactivity of the companies that undertook them. And it is not rarethat companies are perceived as responsible because of thoseexamples, in spite of some irresponsible practices in their coreactivity (e.g. being accused of monopolistic practices or operating in

unsustainable sectors). Clearly, this results from the close rela-tionship between CSR and PR in Poland.

What distinguishes our project from others undertaken inPoland so far is the method of case studyselection. We werelookingfor case studies which are strictly connected with sustainability,multidimensional and interdisciplinary, obligatorily referring to allpillars of sustainable development. We concentrated on the casesconnected to business. Our ambition was to identify and describethe cutting-edge and inspiring cases to show sustainable develop-ment become an authentic movement in Poland, with a potential toinuence our business activities and shape our economy. Never-theless, whileselecting cases, wedid not try to avoid difcult issues,traps and problems, which are inseparably connected with theinnovative character of these actions and generally with the

implementation of sustainable development in a young and stilldeveloping market economy. What we avoided though wereexamples of activities related to public relations, cause-relatedmarketing, and other kinds of marketing and advertising activities.

To identify the recent Polish case studies meeting the abovecriteria, we made a call addressed to the experts and practitioners

activities inPolish business

External (EU)

funding

Polish goodpractice

Environmental andsocial awarenessof citizens and

decision makers

Competition (alsowith companies from

external markets)

Technicalsupport/goodpractice from

abroad

Institutions/economicinstruments of

environmental policy

EUinstitutionalpressure

Sustainability'know-how' in

Polishorganizations

Social capital andtrust

Sustainable

Fig. 1. System diagram of current drivers and barriers to sustainability in Polish business.

Table 1

Drivers and barriers to sustainability in Poland as identied in the literature.

Drivers Barriers

Structural changeRestructuring of companiesCompetitionNew institutions in environmental policy, including new economic instrumentsEU institutional pressure

External fundingForeign direct investmentExternal technical support (including sharing of good practice)Imitating good practice from abroadActivity of NGOsDevelopment of mechanisms and institutions during the communist era and

the transition period that might support sustainable development

Poor institutionsLow environmental and social awareness of citizens and decision

makers (environment or developmentdilemma)Entrusting PR departments with sustainability/CSRFew genuine good practices available among Polish companies

Low levels of social capital and trustNew problems related to consumption (e.g. waste, trafc)


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of sustainable development in Poland. First of all, we addressed ourcall to the partners of the Sendzimir Foundation, includinginstructors and alumni of its Summer Academy Challenges ofSustainable Development in Poland, organized in our countryannually since 1998. It is a numerous and active group of sustain-able development professionals, including researchers, leaders andactivists in NGOs, people employed in companies of various sizes asCSR coordinators or in other positions connected with sustain-ability, as well as consultants. Secondly, we reached with our callother scientists and experts of sustainable development and CSR inPoland. We also searched the literature and other resources toidentify cases meeting our criteria. Among others, we studied allmain catalogues of Polish CSR good practices, and several sectoraldatabases and research papers on the subject. This search wasconducted since February to November 2009 and we analysed mostof Polish case studies available in that time. As a result, we selected11 cases that we judged as the most eligible for our research andasked the authors to describe them for use both in research andteaching. An additional benet of this project was the businesssection of the rst Polish textbook on sustainable developmentwhich was based entirely on Polish case studies (also published inEnglish: Kronenberg and Bergier, 2010). The textbook features

a broader selection of 23 case studies from various aspects of Polishsociety and economy. The book shows that during the 20 yearssince the fall of communism, we have already collected a substan-tial amount of material that canbe used forteaching and promotingthe principles of sustainable development in Poland and in othercountries.

Although the obtained case studies cannot be generalized torepresent the overall situation of sustainable development in Polishbusiness sector, they indicate the new trends emerging as a resultof the drivers and barriers presented in the previous section. Themain advantage of using case studies is that they help to identifynew important variables and generate new hypotheses, based onan inductive analysis (Odell, 2001; Georgeand Bennett, 2005). Theycan even contribute to theory building, especially if one nds an

extreme case that seems very unlikely to conrm a given hypothesisto actually do so, or they can inrm theories if one identies a casethat disconrms a theory even when the conditions seem favorableto conrm it (Odell, 2001). In this light, our case studies help toreject the prevalent view that business in CEE is inherently unsus-tainable and that good sustainability case studies have to be soughtoutside the region.

3.2. Results

Overviews of 11 case studies are presented inTable 2. Theseexamples refer to business activity, either directly (stakeholderrelations; sustainability management; production; sustainablesupply chain management) or indirectly (indicating broader busi-

ness opportunities, such as construction; replacing products withservices; public-private partnerships; changing demand patterns).Table 2 contains short descriptions of each case study (CS),

including the problem to which each refers, the solution developed,the driving force for the solution, and the trend that it representsfrom the list of trends identied in the previous section. A note hasalso been made on the replication factor of each example, i.e.whether such a situation is or can become common and underwhat circumstances. Detailed descriptions of these case studies canbe found in the above mentioned textbook (Kronenberg andBergier, 2010).

Although the selected examples represent good practice andissues particularly relevant to the principles of sustainable devel-opment, they often only replicate good practices developed in other

countries. This is related to the introduction of EU policies,

popularization of CSR (including the introduction of practices fol-lowed by international corporations to their Polish subsidiaries),and the slowly increasing level of environmental and socialawareness amongst the Poles themselves. These examples conrmthat EU membership (since 2004) has helped to implementsustainable development in Poland both nancially andinstitutionally.

CS1 illustrates how socially and environmentally responsiblebehavior of companies has been promoted by new EU regulations.Not only have these regulations provided a legal framework formore restrictive execution of law but alsothey helped to create newsocio-economic conditions with stronger institutions and betteropportunities for the involvement of society. Indeed, Polish citizensrarely take part in public consultations or other forms of decisionmaking both because of their passive attitude and disillusionmentwith the functioning of public institutions (Kolarska-Bobinska,2003), and because of poor quality of public consultationprocesses (Celinski et al., 2011). As a result, private interestspredominate and public goods are often neglected. However, CS1demonstrates a typical situation where social attitudes have beenchanging, from the initial environment or developmentdilemmato a more comprehensive sustainable development perspective

(environmental Kuznets curve). Both local people and authoritiesinitially favored jobs over environmental or social responsibility,and then gradually realized that economic, environmental andsocial objectives are not contradictory and that they can require thecompany to be more responsible. Changing social attitudes are alsoreected in other case studies, indicating changing demand, themost important driver of business activity (CS10, CS11).

The quality of public institutions has been improving during thetransition period which resulted in new opportunities for public-private partnerships (CS2, CS3, CS4). In the early years of thetransition period, Polish local authorities often beneted from aidfunding (CS3) but the availability of these funds has been graduallylimited. Currently, EU funds provide a major development stimulusand increasingly other options are explored. Public-private part-

nerships provide an opportunity for undertaking large-scaleprojects, also in the area of natural resource management andimproving the state of still relatively poor condition of publicinfrastructure and public space. However, what is necessary is notonly funding but also innovative strategies for urban renewal,combining different dimensions of renovation, such as the onefollowed in the case of the Turzyn Quarter in Szczecin (CS3).Interestingly, there was already one new urban project taking intoconsideration the ideas of a sustainable city prepared and plannedby a private company (CS4), which again reects changing demandfrom consumers. In CS4 future inhabitants and other users wereinvolved in the decisionmaking process regarding a new district. Tosome extent social participation was also ensured in CS3.

Most Polish business sustainability examples are not particu-

larly sophisticated, compared to their counterparts in the mostadvanced countries. Nevertheless, the principles of sustainabledevelopment and the related ideas are indeed increasingly beingfollowed in Poland, partly in response to consumer demand, andpartly prompted by foreign examples or foreign owners. In somecases, this is related to broader problems, such as the nancial crisisthat made it necessary to increase transparency and demonstratehow nancial institutions were ensuring the safety of theircustomers and of their own operations (CS5). Simple activities inthis area have spread to large state-owned companies (such as thePolish Gas and Oil Mining company, a monopoly and one of thelargest companies in Poland, CS6). On the one hand, state-ownedcompanies are most often perceived as the least likely to changeand respond to new market signals. On the other hand, most of

them are large and highly visible and thus draw a lot of public


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attention. Comparing CS5 and CS6, we can see the differencebetween following and imitating good practice from developedcountries e the former being more creative, and the latter esimpler.

Despite the fact the demand for sustainability-related practicesin Poland is increasing, it is still too low to be sufcient for mostcompanies to undertake these activities. Some exporting compa-nies only undertook such activities in response to pressure fromforeign markets (CS7) and others as part of corporate policies (inthe case of international companies, CS8). In spite of the fact thatthe life cycle approach is being promoted by the EU, this is still notreected strongly enough in national policies of some of the newmembers (cf. Kronenberg and Maliszewska, 2004; Kronenberg,2007). Thus, companies that are active in international marketshave to be ahead of those active in Poland only, which might givethem advantage over their national competitors once regulationsand demand change further (Porter, 1991; Porter and Van der Linde,1995).

Innovative business solutions, such as producteservice systems,are also appearing in Poland and often they are undertaken bySMEs. Renting DIY tools and equipment provides a prime exampleof a market that has grown rapidly in recent years. CS9 reects

important barriers to this kind of solutions, using an example ofpublic libraries the number of which and the demand for theservices of which have both been decreasing. Interestingly, rentingused to be more common in Poland in the communist era than it isnow, conrming that not everything that was promoted at thattime was unsustainable. However, it is the association with thecommunist period and the general inaccessibility of consumptiongoods at that time that results in the aversion to shared ownership.Nowadays, this heritage negatively affects the potential to spreadinnovative solutions, such as producteservice systems, in Polandand other transition economies.

One more interesting trend is increasing interest of Polishconsumers in responsible or ethical consumption. This is reectedin the rapidly growing market for fair trade products which is

managed largely as a bottom-up initiative of a coalition of NGOs(CS10). This example reects a new consumption trend and a newmarket opportunity, not only related to foreign products but also tosimilar products from Poland. Eventually, it also demonstrates thesocial analogue of an environmental Kuznets curve, with increas-ingly afuent people paying increasing attention to the conditionsin which their products were manufactured. Nevertheless, one hasto remember that fair trade market is still minuscule in Poland, andits rapid growth rate results from its nascent state.

Education programmes run by NGOs (CS11) help to alleviate theabove problems. However these, in addition to the use of foreignexamples, should also make reference to local knowledge andtraditions, and in their examples refer directly to Polish conditions.Such communications would also be more convincing for a Polish

audience. Indeed, using national case studies demonstrates thatsustainable development is possible in a given social and economicsetting, and it can help promote sustainability more than broadlyused perfected examples from abroad. Eventually, a network ofsustainability professionals who exchange opinions and share themwith others is gradually evolving around these initial examples.

4. Discussion and conclusions

Our aimwas to collate progressive case studies from Poland and,based on their analysis, to assess the drivers and barriers tosustainability. Showing that good case studies are already availablenationally might better motivate other stakeholders to follow them

rather than constantly using the same case studies from other

countries, which are sometimes eitherout of date or unsuited to thePolish context.

Adjusting their activities to the requirements of sustainabledevelopment, companies in developed countries are increasinglyresponding to pressures exerted by social and economic actors.These include the need to obtain the so-called social licence tooperate (Gunningham et al., 2004) and the related sustainablechain management (Seuring and Mller, 2008). Our CS1 demon-strates the increasing importance of the social licence to operate inPoland and CS8 shows how global corporations are inuencingtheirinternational supply chains. Additionally, CS11 highlights theimportant role of NGOs in promoting sustainable consumption.Although in Poland, as well as in other CEE countries (Tuncer et al.,2008), NGOs still have much potential to exploit, they are alreadyimplementing many activities that their counterparts in moredeveloped countries perform to inuence consumers andproducers (Hartman et al., 1999; Church and Lorek, 2007).

In response to market and civil society pressure, companiesinitiate dialogue with their stakeholders, including throughsustainability reporting (CS5). However, of almost 1900 GRI-compliant sustainability reports published in 2010 and registeredwith GRI, only 9 were prepared by Polish companies ( GRI, 2011).

More companies started to introduce life-cycle thinking into theirproduct management (illustrated by our CS7). Rather than inresponse to consumer pressure as in some highly developedcountries (Heiskanen, 2000), they are motivated by the use of LCAand life-cycle thinking in EU policy (Kronenberg, 2007). Few state-owned companies are also trying to follow the concept ofsustainable development (CS6), but similarly to the situation indeveloped countries, e.g. Australia (Adams and McNicholas, 2007),they are less eager to engage into sustainability.

Although in developed countries public-private partnershipsare more commonly used than in Poland, like in our CS2, they aremost often initiated by local or regional authorities and not bycompanies (von Malmborg, 2003). The potential to use thisapproach in Poland is huge, as both CS3 and CS4 further demon-

strate, because of the scale of development challenges still ahead ofthe country. Indeed, the New Urbanism followed in CS4 emerged inthe 1980s in the USA, in response to challenging urban circum-stances and it offered new opportunities for innovative companies(Grant, 2006).

Some sustainability-related innovations particularly stronglydepend on the socio-cultural context, as the example of pro-ducteservice systems demonstrates (CS9). Indeed, not only inPoland do consumption solutions based on shared use have rela-tively low prole in society but in developed countries, too (Mont,2004). Other innovations may be perceived as unattractive forcompanies. For example, fair trade in Poland (CS10) is the domainof NGOs rather than competitive companies as it is the case in themost mature markets for fair trade products, such as the UK

(Davies, 2008; Davies et al., 2009). The Polish Fair Trade Coalitioncreated in 2009 is not yet afliated with the Fairtrade LabellingOrganizations International and the sales are minor not onlycompared to those in the largest fair trade markets but even to thesmaller countries of CEE region.

Our analysis indicates that some good case studies from Polandare already approaching sustainability standards of developedcountries. Furthermore, the difculty to identify case studies thatwould integrate all three dimensions of sustainability is not specicto Poland, as such cases are also relatively rare in the internationalsetting (Seuring and Mller, 2008). Our case studies demonstratethe complicated system of interactions between different stake-holders which has to change in transformation to sustainability. Onthe one hand, this transformation should be easier in a transition

economye

because change is necessary anyway and new ideas


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might be explored relatively easily. On the other hand, it is easier tothink in a standard (conservative) way and the importance ofsustainable development in the early 1990s was probably notenough to inuence signicantly the situation of Poland.

After more than 20 years since the economic transition started,it is crucial for CEE countries to share their experience, and popu-larize good cases available and discuss them on the internationalforum. They will serve as guidance for other countries and asa platform for undertaking common initiatives. We treat this articleas an invitation tosuch a discussionand as an input tothe CEE goodpractices database, which hopefully will develop and improve.

Examining in greater depth how to further increase awarenessand the involvement of citizens in environmental decision makingis a particularly important area for further research. One more areaof further research might be on sustainability and SMEs. SMEsconstitute the largest share of businesses and they have a signi-cant inuence on everyday lives of many individuals and commu-nities. It is often suggested that many of these enterprises followthe ideas of sustainable development and CSR but, unlike largecompanies, they are not able to use this as a leverage in theirpromotional strategies (Bienkiewicz, 2007). So far, SMEs have notreceived enough attention and they were not represented in our

selection of case studies.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Tomasz Jelenski, Agnieszka Kopanska,Agata Koz1owska, Przemys1aw Kurczewski, Anna Lewandowska,qukasz Makuch, Marta Struminska-Kutra and Leszek Swiatek whocontributed their case studies to our project. We are also grateful toAlastor Coleby for improving the readability of this text and toDavid Benson and Gyula Zilahy for their comments on the earlierdrafts. The project was carried out with nancial support from theSendzimir Foundation, the Polish National Fund for EnvironmentalProtection and Water Management, and the Deutsche Bundes-stiftung Umwelt.

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