scholarly journals Embracing the variety of sustainable business models: A prolific field of research and a future research agenda

2018 ◽  
Vol 194 ◽  
pp. 695-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolay Dentchev ◽  
Romana Rauter ◽  
Lára Jóhannsdóttir ◽  
Yuliya Snihur ◽  
Michele Rosano ◽  
...  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (19) ◽  
pp. 10908
Author(s):  
Anika Süß ◽  
Kristina Höse ◽  
Uwe Götze

Since the need of sustainable development is indisputable, companies are forced to strive for resources, processes, and products that are sustainable. Thus, their business models as the main representation of their activities should be designed in an ecologically, economically, and socially beneficial way. However, designing and developing sustainable business models is closely linked to their evaluation. Sustainable business model evaluation as a vital part of business model development has been addressed in literature in the past with increasing frequency. As a consequence, the plethora of different approaches of sustainability-oriented business model evaluation calls for a systematic literature review. Thus, in this study, we reviewed existing articles on sustainability-oriented business model evaluation and identified four main categories of evaluation methods: single indicators (I), indicator system/framework (II), simulation-based evaluation (III), and multi criteria decision-making (IV). By analyzing and structuring the proposed approaches, their benefits and limitations are revealed, pointing out gaps and future research needs for successfully designing and evaluating business models today and in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Nosratabadi ◽  
Amir Mosavi ◽  
Shahaboddin Shamshirband ◽  
Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas ◽  
Andry Rakotonirainy ◽  
...  

During the past two decades of e-commerce growth, the concept of a business model has become increasingly popular. More recently, the research on this realm has grown rapidly, with diverse research activity covering a wide range of application areas. Considering the sustainable development goals, the innovative business models have brought a competitive advantage to improve the sustainability performance of organizations. The concept of the sustainable business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural, or other contexts, in a sustainable way. The process of sustainable business model construction forms an innovative part of a business strategy. Different industries and businesses have utilized sustainable business models’ concept to satisfy their economic, environmental, and social goals simultaneously. However, the success, popularity, and progress of sustainable business models in different application domains are not clear. To explore this issue, this research provides a comprehensive review of sustainable business models literature in various application areas. Notable sustainable business models are identified and further classified in fourteen unique categories, and in every category, the progress -either failure or success- has been reviewed, and the research gaps are discussed. Taxonomy of the applications includes innovation, management and marketing, entrepreneurship, energy, fashion, healthcare, agri-food, supply chain management, circular economy, developing countries, engineering, construction and real estate, mobility and transportation, and hospitality. The key contribution of this study is that it provides an insight into the state of the art of sustainable business models in various application areas and future research directions. This paper concludes that popularity and the success rate of sustainable business models in all application domains have been increased along with the increasing use of advanced technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
João J. Ferreira ◽  
Cristina I. Fernandes ◽  
Pedro M. Veiga ◽  
Mathew Hughes

PurposeThis study aims to map scientific publications, intellectual structure and research trends in the sustainable business model (SBM) field. Specifically, it attempts to (1) identify the fundamental contributions of research in this area of knowledge; and (2) determine the research lines that constitute the most prominent intellectual structure. We leverage these insights to formulate and propose a future research agenda for SBM.Design/methodology/approachThe authors made recourse to the bibliometric, co-citation and cluster analysis techniques. To evaluate potential patterns among articles, we analysed how articles are jointly cited. We further applied hierarchical cluster analysis to the articles and used co-citation analysis to group the interrelated articles into distinct sets.FindingsThe results enable the identification and classification of the prevailing theoretical foci in the domain of SBM: (1) SBM implementation; (2) SBM challenges; (3) institutional SBM; (4) circular SBM; and (5) emerging SBM.Originality/valueThis study identifies, explores, analyses and summarises the main theoretical approaches and themes surrounding SBM research to date, contributing to deepening the literature by identifying the priority areas concerning sustainable business models and encouraging future research of an internationally excellent standard.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Upasana Dhanda ◽  
Vijay Kumar Shrotryia

PurposeToday, corporate sustainability is at a tipping point. With average lifespan of organizations shrinking, striving for corporate longevity and sustainability has become indispensable in this fast-paced world. Despite the growing interest in this domain, companies are struggling to define sustainability in a way that is relevant to their business. This article attempts to synthesize the extant literature and provide a conceptual perspective on corporate sustainability and sustainable business models.Design/methodology/approachThematic literature review was done to gain an understanding of the extant literature and the ongoing debates on organizational sustainability. As the literature in context of corporate sustainability was found to be in a fluid state, a thematic review was found suitable to systematize and disclose valuable insights that open avenues for addressing sustainability concerns.FindingsThe paper attempts to throw light on the journey of organizations towards sustainability and how the context of sustainability has changed for the organizations over time. The paper discusses how companies embarked on their sustainability revolution by shifting their focus from mere compliance and philanthropy to attaining a sustainability edge and also explicates the transformation from traditional business models to sustainable business models. Finally, the research gaps are identified to pave the way for future research in the domain of corporate sustainability.Originality/valueThe extant literature on corporate sustainability is in a shambolic state. This creates a need to investigate what has been done and how the context of corporate sustainability is being shaped. This paper contributes to the emerging literature on sustainability by providing a conceptual perspective and highlighting the research gaps which pave the way for future research on sustainability paradigm.


Procedia CIRP ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 721-726 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Cornelis de Man ◽  
Jan Ola Strandhagen

Author(s):  
Saeed Nosratabadi ◽  
Amir Mosavi ◽  
Shahab Shamshirband ◽  
Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas ◽  
Andry Rakotonirainy ◽  
...  

During the past two decades of the e-commerce growth the concept of business model has become increasingly popular. More recently, the research on this realm has grown rapidly with a diverse research activity covering a wide range of application areas. Considering the sustainable development goals the innovative business models have brought competitive advantage to improve the sustainability performance of organizations. The concept of sustainable business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts in a sustainable way. The process of sustainable business model construction forms an innovative part of business strategy. Different industries and businesses have utilized sustainable business models concept to satisfy their economic, environmental and social goals simultaneously. However, the success, popularity, and the progress of sustainable business models in different application domains are not clear. To explore this issue, this research provides a comprehensive review on sustainable business models literature in various application areas. Notable sustainable business models are identified and further classified in fifteen unique categories, and in every category the progress (either failure or success) has been reviewed and the research gaps are discussed. Taxonomy of the applications includes, innovation, management and marketing, entrepreneurship, energy, fashion, healthcare, agri-food, supply chain management, circular economy, developing countries, engineering, construction and real estate, mobility and transportation, and hospitality. The key contribution of this study is to provide an insight about the state of the art of sustainable business models in various application areas and the future research directions. This paper concludes that popularity and the success rate of sustainable business models in all application domains have been increased along with increasing use of advanced ICT technologies.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Nosratabadi ◽  
Amir Mosavi ◽  
Shahaboddin Shamshirband ◽  
Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas ◽  
Andry Rakotonirainy ◽  
...  

During the past two decades of e-commerce growth, the concept of a business model has become increasingly popular. More recently, the research on this realm has grown rapidly, with diverse research activity covering a wide range of application areas. Considering the sustainable development goals, the innovative business models have brought a competitive advantage to improve the sustainability performance of organizations. The concept of the sustainable business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural, or other contexts, in a sustainable way. The process of sustainable business model construction forms an innovative part of a business strategy. Different industries and businesses have utilized sustainable business models’ concept to satisfy their economic, environmental, and social goals simultaneously. However, the success, popularity, and progress of sustainable business models in different application domains are not clear. To explore this issue, this research provides a comprehensive review of sustainable business models literature in various application areas. Notable sustainable business models are identified and further classified in fourteen unique categories, and in every category, the progress -either failure or success- has been reviewed, and the research gaps are discussed. Taxonomy of the applications includes innovation, management and marketing, entrepreneurship, energy, fashion, healthcare, agri-food, supply chain management, circular economy, developing countries, engineering, construction and real estate, mobility and transportation, and hospitality. The key contribution of this study is that it provides an insight into the state of the art of sustainable business models in various application areas and future research directions. This paper concludes that popularity and the success rate of sustainable business models in all application domains have been increased along with the increasing use of advanced technologies.


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