Abstract
ABSTRACT Context: research into sustainability as a highly debated concept has become widespread and given rise to a diverse and interesting arena in the management literature in which the relevance of business models is extensively acknowledged. Objective: by integrating sustainability into the business model concept, this study attempts to determine how business models are driven toward sustainability. Methods: a qualitative multiple-case approach is applied to scrutinize five small/micro companies offering nature-based activities in Arctic Norway. Results: four internal and six external drivers are found crucial to incorporating sustainability in business models. Conclusion: the findings contribute to the field of sustainable business models by deepening the understanding of how specific internal and external drivers operate across different business models. Moreover, business models are driven toward sustainability differently, depending on the extent to which sustainability is embedded into them.
Highlights
Context: research into sustainability as a highly debated concept has become widespread and given rise to a diverse and interesting arena in the management literature in which the relevance of business models is extensively acknowledged
Research design This study is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study to develop the theory based on the empirical data (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2014) to answer “how business model (BM) are driven toward sustainability in Arctic nature tourism?” Case study design enables us to address the inherent complication of sustainability issues as it is a powerful approach in explaining complex phenomena, which cannot be manipulated by the researcher (Yin, 2014)
All five BMs are not driven toward sustainability through all 10 drivers; the companies are driven toward incorporating sustainability into BMs differently
Summary
Context: research into sustainability as a highly debated concept has become widespread and given rise to a diverse and interesting arena in the management literature in which the relevance of business models is extensively acknowledged. The research into Arctic tourism as a new trend has intensified since the mid-1990s (Maher et al, 2014) as the rapid change in guests’ interest and number as well as community-based businesses, demands for systematically obtaining knowledge on micro-level sustainability issues in Arctic (Lee, Weaver, & Prebensen, 2017), for instance, a lack of trained human resource, very vulnerable context, and high seasonality (Maher et al, 2014). The sustainable use of the natural environment in Arctic is highly debated, which makes the sustainability its ‘main theme’ (Lyngnes & Prebensen, 2014; Lee et al, 2017), as tourism companies are more likely to be driven by a shortterm financial horizon (Bramwell & Lane, 2013). To foster sustainable Arctic tourism, more research is required to highlight various aspects of this vulnerable context with a great dependence on nature specially in peripheral rural areas where nature tourism is boosting considerably and has a great potential to contribute to sustainable development (SD) (Lyngnes & Prebensen, 2014)
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