Discussion: View Thread

Organizations are currently facing a lot of pressure to broaden their identity and mission from mere economic value creation to include also social and environmental aspects. Research on corporate responsibility, business sustainability and stakeholder theory have provided us a lot of understanding of the topic. Recently, research on business models – i.e. how firms operationally organize to implement their strategy and mission – has started to integrate with these discussions. This stream of literature focuses on how firms create, deliver and capture value though business models for sustainability or sustainable business models. The current research is exploring new empirical approaches to deeper understand the strategic, organizational and practical implications to sustainable business models.

This symposium will contribute to this important topic by providing seven empirical papers using different methods and data in examination how sustainable business models are organized in various fields globally. It is organized in the form of a thematic panel with an introduction and seven complementary presentations. Discussion among the discussant and with the audience follows.

Nancy Bocken (TU Delft) will act as a panel facilitator and will first provide a state-of-the-art overview of scholarly knowledge on sustainable business models archetypes. Paavo Ritala (School of Business and Management, Lappeenranta University of Technology) will provide insights on the adoption of sustainable business models among S&P500 firms over time (2005-2014). Laura Albareda (Deusto Business School) will discuss about the new and transformed sustainability-oriented capabilities that organizations adopt to build new sustainable business models, including three different types of incremental, renewing and regenerative dynamic capabilities. Krzysztof Dembek (University of Melbourne) will discuss about the Sustainable business models at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). Frank Boons (Manchester Business School) will discuss about sustainable business models as a social process. Thijs Geradts (Rotterdam School of Management) will discuss how corporations can create balanced social, environmental and economic value through social intrapreneurship. Steve Kennedy (Rotterdam School of Management) will discuss findings of an in-depth case study focused on implementing new business models for the circular economy. The paper Stefan Schaltegger (Centre for Sustainability Management, Leuphana University) will present is on co-evolutionary development of sustainability-oriented business model innovations of different companies in a market. 

Looking forward to seeing you at AOM.