A framework for understanding and designing business models for sustainable development

Peter Bradley (), Glenn Parry and Nicholas O’Regan
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Peter Bradley: University of the West of England, Bristol
Glenn Parry: University of the West of England, Bristol
Nicholas O’Regan: University of the West of England, Bristol

Working Papers from Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol

Abstract: The paper presents and applies a novel framework for incorporating ethical concerns for the natural environment and wellbeing into business design. In this sense we are directly confronting sustainable development. Within the context of business ethics, sustainable development can be seen as the application of ethical concerns for the natural environment and wellbeing to societal provisioning (‘meeting needs’). A novel framework proposed in this work synthesises 3 previous business model frameworks and builds in new categories and social, environmental and economic considerations to make it ‘fit’ for the purpose of investigating business models for sustainable development. The contribution made by the novel framework is through its new categories, incorporation of environmental and social considerations, and the ‘torch light articulation’ which aids communication of the concepts. The framework is applied to a case study of an energy provider, allowing a rich and powerful understanding of how the energy company’s business model works in practice and providing new insight of the interaction between different types of value: social, environmental and economic and how context shapes such value.

Keywords: Business model; sustainability; servitization; sustainable business; sustainable development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
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