Objective: there is an ongoing need for businesses to strive to maintain ideals within environmental, economic, and social values - commonly known as the triple bottom line. Manufacturing as a sector has advanced drastically and the literature on sustainable business models in this sector has emerged. The purpose of this paper is to analyze sustainable business models in manufacturing and the approaches and challenges faced in creating and implementing them. Methods: this paper uses a systematic approach to review the literature. We identify sustainable business models and classify them within different industry areas while strategies and challenges emerge from the literature. Results: the findings indicate that there is some empirical work done in investigating the social and environmental dimensions of sustainability in manufacturing. Overall, there is an ongoing transition to sustainable business models in varying divisions of industry. However, the creation and delivery of sustainable economic value is still unexplored. Conclusions: the research provides insight to researchers and practitioners on how organizations implement sustainability while delivering value to their stakeholders. It also provides new avenues for conducting research in unexplored strategies of sustainable business modeling.
Interest on the creation of sustainable value has recently increased as a response to global issues caused by traditional business-as-usual logic. Indeed, corporations pursuing profits and competitive advantage at the expense of social and environmental resources has become a source of pressing concern and institutionalized unsustainability needs to be reversed. To create sustainable value, a paradigm shift is required in who benefits from value creation: beyond customers, suppliers, and business partners, value should be created for an expanded range of stakeholders including governmental and non-governmental entities, local communities, and future generations. This study refers to unique value creation derived from business modeling for sustainability and the stakeholder theory perspective as a theoretical lens for understanding how sustainable shared value is created in the context of carbon capture and utilization. Using an exploratory, in-depth single case study of a microalgae cultivation project, the study gathers empirical evidence to show how engaging stakeholders around a common purpose can serve as a path to open new business opportunities for sustainable shared value. This study challenges the Friedman's assertion of shareholder profits and shows evidence of the power of creating shared value if a company adopts a purpose beyond profits. Through empirical findings on how embedding a sustainable purpose at the core can lead to business opportunities that provide shared value for multiple stakeholders, it outlines how a company can obtain value propositions that cater to economic, environmental, and societal balance in the drive to move toward a more sustainable society. This study thus contributes to the growing body of empirical literature on creating shared value and business models for sustainability. The findings are also relevant for various industry practitioners, presenting insights on sustainable value creation and business modeling for an industry plagued by high emissions and stakeholder pressure to do good.
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