Business Models for Sustainability and the Future of Business–Society Relationships: Value Creation, Power, Risk, and Responsibility

Éditeurs invités

• Romana Rauter, University of Graz
• Abel Diaz Gonzalez, Maastricht University
• Florian Lüdeke-Freund, ESCP Business School
• Maya Hoveskog, Halmstad University
• Nikolay A. Dentchev, University of National and World Economy
• John Elkington, Volans

Synthèse

Contemporary business–society relationships face unprecedented strain due to corporate political influence, externalization of ecological and social costs, rapid technological change, and interconnected ecological and geopolitical crises. Current management approaches prove inadequate for advancing sustainable and equitable outcomes, requiring new analytical frameworks that examine how value is created, captured, and distributed among diverse stakeholders, and how power, risk, and responsibility are allocated across organizational and institutional boundaries.

The business models for sustainability perspective offers a promising lens for understanding these systemic dynamics by directing attention to the organizational arrangements and mechanisms through which sustainable value is created and distributed, power is exercised, and responsibilities are allocated. This special issue seeks theoretical and empirical contributions that explore how BMfS negotiate and reshape business–society relationships, including their potential to create more equitable outcomes and their capacity to reproduce inequalities or shift risks to vulnerable populations.

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Thèmes proposés

• What insights do business models for sustainability (BMfS) offer into the dynamics of business–society relationships in the contemporary context?
• In what ways do existing BMfS facilitate the (re)negotiation of value creation and capture mechanisms and processes, as well as the distribution of power, risk, and responsibility?
• Under what conditions do BMfS reproduce inequality, shift risks to vulnerable actors, create new dependencies, or reinforce private control over societal problems?
• Which critical perspectives can help in studying the 'dark sides' of BMfS and corresponding business–society relationships?
• How do BMfS operate differently across sectors, regions, and institutional environments, particularly in non-Western contexts?
• Which theories, including inter- and multidisciplinary approaches, are and can be used to study BMfS as facilitators of business–society relationships?
• What methodological approaches and innovations can aid in the study of the value creation and capture logics that enable, constrain, or actively reshape the terms on which business–society relationships depend?

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