Changing Business models for Sustainability: Role of drivers and dynamic capabilities in Arctic nature tourism

Abstract

<p>This thesis investigates nature tourism companies, which strive to incorporate sustainability into their business models and change them to be more resilient. For this purpose, it adopts a dynamic perspective on business models by which companies address corporate sustainability which is understood here as a balance among environmental, social, and economic pillars as well as a sustainable competitive advantage. Past studies overlooked the significance of a systematic analysis of drivers and enablers of change as a way to explain how business models are stimulated and changed. Thus, this thesis aims to answer this overall research question: What are the key drivers and dynamic capabilities underlying business model change for sustainability, and how do they give rise to business model changes for sustainability? Four sub-research questions are formulated across three studies: one systematic literature review and two empirical qualitative studies. <p>Article 1 was inspired by the existing literature regarding a prominent knowledge gap in terms of the theorization of business models in tourism research compared to management research. This study resides in a systematic literature review of nature tourism literature about the conceptualization and operationalization of business models with respect to sustainability and innovation. Article 2 follows a qualitative multiple-case study design to comparatively examine five nature tourism companies to explore how their business models are driven to incorporate sustainability aspects. This study differentiates these business models in terms of sustainability integration and underlying drivers to shed light on crucial driving factors in terms of how they can drive various business models to embed sustainability. Article 3 relies on a longitudinal qualitative design to study how nature tourism companies handled the COVID-19 crisis and enhanced their resilience by changing their business models through building dynamic capabilities. To address the temporal aspects of dynamic capabilities and business model changes, two rounds of interviews were held with seven tourism entrepreneurs. This article regards the crisis as a driver underlying the building of dynamic capabilities that set the stage for business model changes. <p>Given the conceptual contribution of individual articles, article 1 stresses that business models are relevant tools to set off the desired changes and innovations and contributes to sustainable business model research by offering insight into how past nature tourism studies applied the concept of business model with respect to sustainability and innovation. By identifying knowledge gaps in the literature on the nature tourism business models, this study yields two empirical qualitative articles, articles 2 and 3. Article 2 contributes to sustainable business model literature by refining and extending past typologies of drivers for sustainability embeddedness by clarifying how drivers perform empirically across different business models, particularly in nature tourism. Compared to article 2, article 3 seeks to probe more closely into firms via their respective dynamic capabilities and underlying practices, which enable business model changes to be either radical (innovations) or incremental (adjustments). While article 2 considers sustainability in terms of social and environmental aspects in addition to the economic aspect, article 3 conceptualizes sustainability in light of resilience. Article 3 proposes a taxonomy of dynamic capability-based practices and contributes to the dynamic capabilities and business model innovation literature in times of crisis. <p>Above all, this thesis contributes to filling the noteworthy knowledge gap in terms of the lack of a systematic and thorough explanation of the relevant key drivers and dynamic capabilities to illustrate business model changes for sustainability. Notably, it makes novel theoretical contributions to the research stream of business model innovations for sustainability. Relatedly, this research clarifies how critical driving factors and dynamic capability-based practices stimulate and facilitate business model changes. This is done in this thesis by differentiating drivers and dynamic capabilities, but at the same time seeing them as closely linked. <p>Hence, by applying a dynamic perspective on business models, the overall findings demonstrate how business models are driven, enabled, and changed to embed sustainability and enhance resilience. This thesis argues that business model design is a continuous task and not a one-time practice. Moreover, the overall results of this thesis provide useful insights into business models in nature tourism in two different situations: a competitive environment before the crisis and a turbulent environment during the crisis. More importantly, as the findings of articles 2 and 3 suggest, the focus of change might vary to ensure a proper balance among economic, social, and environmental aspects. This thesis concludes with some research limitations, suggestions for future studies and implications for practice.