Efficiency, Elasticity, and Disruption: A Mechanistic Framework for Socio-Technical System Transitions

Vitor Miranda de Souza, Diogo Figueirinhas, Brian D. Fath and Fredrik Nilsson
Additional contact information
Vitor Miranda de Souza: Technische Universität München

No kn5s4_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Efficiency improvements are persistently accompanied by demand expansion and increased resource throughput, systematically undermining sustainability strategies in operations and supply chain management. While existing explanations rely on behavioural assumptions or empirical correction factors rather than structural accounts, this paper develops a first-order mechanistic formulation of efficiency-induced demand expansion, introducing system elasticity εsys as a structural property of socio-technical configuration. Building on and generalising Ayres and Warr’s framework, we derive the service relationship S ∝ η^(ε_sys−1) and its resource corollary R ∝ η^(ε_sys−2), establishing two sustainability thresholds: ε_sys > 1 for service expansion and ε_sys > 2 for absolute resource growth. Two independent empirical cases – the 19th-century steam engine and contemporary computing – yield ε_sys ≈ 3.5, consistent with the backfire condition. The formulation reframes the operational challenge from governing resource efficiency to governing service elasticity.

Date: 2026-08-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/6abcfa493fa5cf099a39daee/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:kn5s4_v1

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/kn5s4_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().