An Ontology for Strongly Sustainable Business Models

Abstract

Business is increasingly employing sustainability practices, aiming to improve environmental and social responsibility while maintaining and improving profitability. For many organizations, profit-oriented business models are a major constraint impeding progress in sustainability. A formally defined ontology, a model definition, for profit-oriented business models has been employed globally for several years. However, no equivalent ontology is available in research or practice that enables the description of strongly sustainable business models, as validated by ecological economics and derived from natural, social, and system sciences. We present a framework of strongly sustainable business model propositions and principles as findings from a transdisciplinary review of the literature. A comparative analysis was performed between the framework and the Osterwalder profit-oriented ontology for business models. We introduce an ontology that enables the description of successful strongly sustainable business models that resolves weaknesses and includes functionally necessary relationships.

Sustainable business models: Providing a more holistic perspective

“…Upward and Jones () provided an ontological discussion to define sustainable BMs and propose a framework. These are based on: (i) stakeholders, as human and non‐human; (ii) governance; (ii) tools and framework to embed sustainability; (iv) biomimicry frameworks; and (v) industrial ecology principles.…”

“…The time dimension is conspicuously missing in SBMs discourses. Stubbs and Cocklin (2008) and Upward and Jones (2016) are the most complete with regard to sustainability, with the latter considering the time dimension.…”

Fostering Cultures of Sustainability through Community-Engaged Museums: The History and Re-Emergence of Ecomuseums in Canada and the USA

“…FEM is a tool for designing new organizations, or transforming existing ones, around multiple value propositions. The vision is to create a state of flourishing, both for the organization and for the larger world, which requires a holistic approach to economy, society and the environment [37]. Use of the FEM with museums and other non-profits to date has illustrated that there is much room for improvement in the clarity and specificity with which these organizations approach their goals, and with their approach to measuring social impact [38].…”

Harnessing the Sustainable Development Goals for businesses: A progressive framework for action

“…At the same time, research into corporate sustainability has grown tremendously (Kourula, Pisani, & Kolk, 2017). Out of blends of practice and research, more comprehensive and coherent models for business sustainability have recently been proposed, such as blended value, strongly sustainable (Upward & Jones, 2015), and flourishing (Hoveskog, Halila, Mattsson, Upward, & Karlsson, 2017) to name a few. These are too new to have been deployed widely and proven their mettle as of yet.…”