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Exploring the Roles of Business Models in Societal Transitions
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Author: Christina Bidmon, Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences
Author: Sebastian Fabian Knab, U. Hamburg
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Following recent calls from sustainable business model and transition research, we establish a link between these two fields. We systematically integrate existing knowledge on business models into the well-established multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions and identify three roles of business models and their respective impact on transition dynamics: (1) As part of the socio-technical regime, existing business models hamper transitions by reinforcing the current system’s stability, (2) as intermediates between the technological niche and the socio- technical regime, business models drive transitions by facilitating the stabilization process of technological innovation and its breakthrough from niche to regime level, and (3) as non-technological niche innovation, novel business models drive transitions by building up a substantial part of a new regime without relying on technological innovation. We discuss our contributions to (sustainable) business model and transition research.
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Search Terms: Sustainable business models | Transitions | Multi-level Perspective
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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The Incumbent and the Grass-roots Approach to the Sharing Economy
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Author: Taneli Vaskelainen, U. of Jyväskylä, School of Business and Economics
Author: Karla Münzel, Utrecht U.
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In our paper we examine why there are two distinct and uniform carsharing business models in the German carsharing industry, one of which is run by incumbents and the other of which is run by grass-roots actors, even though theory suggests that at this point of the industry life-cycle there should be active business model experimentation and multiple different configurations. We make a single case study examining the German carsharing industry as a whole and the development of the business models of four companies in particular: cambio carsharing, stadtmobil group, car2go, and DriveNow. We analyze the data longitudinally from the start of professional carsharing in 1988 to 2016 to uncover the paths of business model development. We discover that the two business models have developed according to different trajectories, because of different institutional logics driving the industry actors. Consequently, we suggest that business model research would benefit from observing the institutional logics driving the different actors. We further argue that institutional logics are especially important when studying sharing economy markets, which are by nature institutionally complex.
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Search Terms: business models | institutional logics | sharing economy
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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Paradoxical thinking and sustainable business models
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Author: Koen Van Bommel, Vrije U. Amsterdam
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In this article we build on the paradox literature to argue that managing sustainability’s tensions is an important element of transitioning towards sustainable business models. We empirically examine sustainability tensions and find that organizations that rely primarily on an instrumental or narrow ‘business case’ logic shy away from embracing these tensions. They view sustainability as an “either/or” scenario and make limited use of paradoxical thinking. On the other hand, we also identify organizations that work through tensions using paradoxical or integrative strategies, thereby aiming for a “both/and” scenario. These organizations find it easier to transition towards sustainable business models. With these results we highlight how using a paradox lens can help organizations to make sense of sustainability’s complexity and move towards sustainable business models. We also highlight that organizations ignoring sustainability’s tensions may undermine sustainability’s value-creating potential and erode their competitive advantage.
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Search Terms: Paradox | sustainable business model | corporate sustainability
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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A Sustainable Business Model for Network Enhanced Green Innovativeness Capability Development (WITHDRAWN)
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Author: Sinead Melllett, Waterford Institute of Technology
Author: Felicity Kelliher, Waterford Institute of Technology
Author: Denis Harrington, Head of Graduate Business, Waterford Institute of Technology, IRELAND
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This paper proposes a sustainable business model that determines the key criteria to facilitate green innovativeness capability development for green enterprise in the micro-firm context. Micro-firms, those firms with less than ten full-time employees, need to be continuously innovating in order to sustain their enterprise in the emerging green economy. This context is often characterised by continuous sustained transformation of ideas and knowledge into new products, processes or services in a resource constrained environment exasperated by the micro-firm’s size. Prior studies have found that facilitated business networks have a positive impact on micro-firm sustainability as these networks enhance the firm’s constrained resource base, enable innovativeness capability development and act as an additional resource in the micro-firm. This study uses a qualitative interpretative multiple case, cross-country approach to explore micro-firm green enterprise, encompassing green network activities in Ireland and Canada over a twelve month period. The findings assist in understanding the impact of facilitated networks on green innovativeness capability development in the micro-firm environment. They offer fresh insights and open new research paths to green innovativeness capability development in micro-firms and have implications for evolving green enterprises, facilitated networks and policy makers. The proposed innovativeness capability development framework can be used as a guideline for micro-firm support organisations including facilitated networks in assisting micro-firms in reaching their green innovativeness goals and objectives. It can also be used by green micro-enterprises in the attainment of the green innovativeness capabilities for the green economy.
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Search Terms: Green innovativeness | sustainable business model | network interface
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Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
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