The difference between transition and transformation

Abstract

The terms ‘transition’ and ‘transition management’ encompass the change towards a more sustainable society and embody questions of how this goal should be achieved. Researchers under the banner of ‘transition’ are concentrated in the Netherlands. To find out to what extent ‘transition’ is a Dutch preoccupation, we perform a literature search to identify key references, key authors, and the coherence between references and authors. We contrast this with an alternative denominator ‘transformation’. By analysing co-author and citation networks, we find large differences in these groups of documents. The transition literature is characterised by a large network of directly and indirectly cooperating authors with clear clusters; transformation literature only contains small and isolated author networks. The transition literature is tightly knit with high degrees of internal references and a clearly distinguishable core. Transformation literature has no clear core and fewer connections between authors and articles. Key transition authors are predominantly Dutch. They repeatedly write together and cite each other’s work. The transformation literature makes more use of highly cited research outside the field. Whether this is an indicator of quality remains to be seen. This analysis can be used as a first step for opening up that debate: it should be enriched by systematic in-depth exploration of the field, including research into societal pay-back.