The MuVe project aims to identify social profiles of adherence and predisposition to change in favor of a more sustainable economic development by three distinct groups: entrepreneurs, local authorities and population.
The accumulation of operational failures of several public and private systems, accentuated by the recent financial and economic crisis, led to the preparation of prospective documents by international, community, national and think tank entities. Although of a distinct nature and scope, they all underline the need for a transition to new models of economic development and recognize that this transition requires deep cultural change.
The project is structured around three main activities:
- Construction of a Transition Agenda of reference, based on a set of convergent and contrasting aspects selected from forward-looking documents, which will measure the degree of adhesion and predisposition to change the members of the target groups in favor of a more sustainable economic development ;
- An analytical framework of multidisciplinary scope, based on theories of the transition to sustainability and theories on social change and human values, aiming at clarifying how the “culture” dimension (values and attitudes) conditions the intensity, direction, rhythm and forms of governance of the suggested changes;
- The construction of a typology, based on the results of surveys of Portuguese entrepreneurs, local authorities and population, identifying associations between independent variables (degree of adhesion and predisposition to change) and dependent variables (socio-structural characteristics, attitudes and values of respondents ).