Publication date: Available online 6 April 2017
Source:Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Author(s): Pablo Muñoz, Boyd Cohen

Sharing economy businesses have emerged in recent years as a disruptive approach to the traditional way of planning, modeling and doing business. The phenomenon has gained significant traction within a wide range of domains including entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and management more broadly. Despite this surge and interest, there is a lack of empirical research regarding the increasing diversity of sharing economy business models and the implications for business growth, community impact, sustainability and public policy. With this research, we sought to leverage a rigorous comparative method, fs/QCA, to assess the business models of 36 firms in the sharing economy. Leveraging a rich set of qualitative data, our analysis leveraged seven dimensions of sharing economy business models drawn from extant research, revealing a typology comprising five ideal types that collectively account for the constellation of possible, empirically-relevant business models across the sharing economy. The emergent dilemmas and paradoxes as well as implications of these typologies of business models for startups, investors and policymakers are explored.

Publication date: Available online 22 March 2017
Source:Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Author(s): Thayaparan Gajendran, Richard Oloruntoba

The case study on the re-building program of the Victoria bushfire disaster of 7th Feb 2009 provides insights on the relationship between governance structures in post-disaster re-development and the goal of building sustainable and resilient communities. The paper links ‘governance’ to ‘resilience’ using Stage VI of Turner's 1976 model as a theoretical lens. A qualitative research strategy was utilized to elicit descriptive qualitative responses from which research goals were addressed. The findings show that the design of governance structures for re-building after a disaster impacts the ability to secure resilience. Also, several resilience aspects seem to be impacted by governance issues relating to: the balance between urgency vs. need of space; the role of formal and informal stakeholders; the social-psychological dimension in information sharing as well as entrepreneurial opportunities in rebuilding, and economic sustainability.

Green innovation is becoming increasingly important for companies and whole societies, and the research in this field has essentially increased in recent years. As green innovation is expected to ensure both environmental sustainability and economical profitability, it might seriously affect the partly colliding interests of various groups of stakeholders. However, from previous studies less is known about the impact that various groups of stakeholders and particularly the relationships among these stakeholders exert on the implementation of green innovations. To address this gap we first substantiate the relevance of the stakeholder theory for innovation studies in general and green innovations in particular. Furthermore, we argue that from the innovator's perspective green innovations are likely to be affected by the interactions with as well as between many primary and secondary stakeholders. To explore this issue in-depth we conducted a case study of the implementation of an offshore wind farm in Germany. Our research revealed that network ties among stakeholders can be both conducive and detrimental to the green innovation. The insights gained in our study contribute to the stakeholder analysis for the implementation of green innovations.

Publication date: April 2017
Source:Journal of World Business, Volume 52, Issue 3

Author(s): Dima Jamali, Charlotte Karam, Juelin Yin, Vivek Soundararajan

In this paper, we advance an analytic framework to help better trace the meaning and practice of CSR in developing countries, which draws from an institutional logics approach combined with the Scandinavian institutionalist perspective on the circulation of ideas. We suggest a two-step analytic framework where (1) circulated generalized assumptive logics relevant to mainstream CSR understanding are translated for applicability to developing countries generally and (2) through further circulation these translated logics are adapted toward a more context-specific relevant and meaningful application of CSR. Translation and adaptation form the basis of ongoing “editing processes” which we use to help tease out the multiplicity of institutional logics captured in the CSR literature pertaining to four specific countries of interest: China, India, Nigeria and Lebanon. The nuanced analysis presented helps provide relevant implications in relation to supranational, as well as culturally embedded and nuanced institutional logics shaping CSR in developing countries. It also highlights the existence of a hybridity of entangled institutional logics shaping not only CSR expressions in the four focal developing countries, but also ensuing patterns of development.