Resolving paradoxical tensions during business model innovation for sustainability in retailing: The role of the ecosystem

Guillaume Do Vale (), Isabelle Collin-Lachaud () and Xavier Lecocq
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Guillaume Do Vale: IDRAC Business school Lyon - Institut pour le Développement et la Recherche d'Action Commerciale - Université de Lyon
Isabelle Collin-Lachaud: TSM - Toulouse School of Management Research - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - TSM - Toulouse School of Management - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse
Xavier Lecocq: LUMEN - Lille University Management Lab - ULR 4999 - Université de Lille

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Abstract: The vast and pressing environmental and societal challenges, as well as the difficulty of the path to sustainability, are substantially challenging retailers' business models (BM hereafter). Researchers have yet to answer how retailers cope with different kinds of tensions in their process of BM innovation for sustainability. Drawing on a longitudinal, seven-year, inductive, multiple case study of three European retailers that decided explicitly to move toward sustainability, this research highlights different tensions that confront retailers in this process and the decisions they take to resolve them. Three stages are identified as necessary to implement a BM for sustainability in retailing. In a first stage, patching sustainability initiatives onto traditional BM creates tensions, only some of which can be resolved by middle managers in their day-to-day activities. Others persist and represent paradoxical tensions. In a second stage, formal engagement by owners and senior to change the core of traditional BM can resolve paradoxes, by allowing for strategic actions at the ecosystem level. In the third stage, ecosystem-level actions involve renewing relationships with traditional stakeholders and initiating new relationships with new ones to implement the BM for sustainability. Moreover, a specific feature of BM innovation for sustainability in retailing is that stores can take major roles in the ecosystem, functioning as local hubs for circularity.

Keywords: Multiple case study; Longitudinal; Paradoxical tensions; Ecosystem; Business model; Sustainability; Retailing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse and nep-env
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Published in Journal of Retailing, 2025, 101 (4), pp.564-582. ⟨10.1016/j.jretai.2025.06.001⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05586045

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2025.06.001

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