Abstract
Social networking technologies such as social media, crowd concepts, or gamification represent key resources for the integration of customers, value network partners, and the community into sustainable business models. However, there is a lack of understanding of how sustainable enterprises apply such technologies. To close this gap, we propose a taxonomy of design options for social networking technologies in sustainable business models. Our taxonomy comprises eight dimensions that deal with relevant questions of the design of social networking technologies. When creating our taxonomy, we built on existing literature and use cases and involved experienced practitioners in the field of sustainable business models for the validation of our taxonomy. In this way, our study contributes to knowledge on the use of social networking technologies in sustainable business models and how such technologies influence the boundaries of sustainable business models. Likewise, we provide practical insights into the use of social networking technologies in sustainable business models.
Highlights
Sustainable business models incorporate concepts, principles, and objectives that aim to protect or create natural, social, and economic capital into the proposition, creation, delivery, and capture of value [1]
Social network technologies have already proved to be effective in sustainable business models in different fields of application, e.g., social media to communicate about sustainability [12] and for value co-creation [11,13]; crowdsourcing to fund sustainable business and create a first customer base [14]; and gamification to inform about sustainable topics, stimulate sustainable consumption, and train sustainable behavior [15]
The objective of this paper is to provide a taxonomy that allows social networking technologies in sustainable business models to be examined in terms of design options for administration, organization, and value generation—and to do so with reference to enterprises, platforms, customers, and society
Summary
Sustainable business models incorporate concepts, principles, and objectives that aim to protect or create natural, social, and economic capital into the proposition, creation, delivery, and capture of value [1]. That is why the ecosystems of sustainable business models and the social networks involved have attracted a lot of attention within the last years [2,3,4,5,6]. Social media, and crowd concepts [7] and gamification [8]—to which we refer collectively in this paper as “social networking technologies”—will be a very important tool in sustainable business models as they connect people and allow decentralized social interaction, cooperation, and building communities [9,10,11].
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