New Business Models for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Management Services: Action Research With a Large Environmental Sector Company

Abstract

Businesses are increasingly called upon to contribute to efforts to protect biodiversity and natural capital. Our article presents the results of an action research conducted with a major company in the environmental sector that has been experimenting with innovative services dedicated to ecosystem management. We show the specific organizational and social challenges the company faced in upscaling this strategy due to its path dependency to its historical value creation model, and to the collective action issues that characterize biodiversity management. We introduce a new interdisciplinary theoretical framework for the development of what we refer to as “business models for ecosystem management services,” defined by the very central place they give to the achievement of measurable biodiversity performances. We then propose four such new business models designed through participatory methods that combine in a unique way a corporate value creation model with an ecological value cocreation model at the ecosystem level.