At the heart of the Implementation of a disruptive Sustainable Business Model (SBM): The PSS-CIRCULAR Case, a structurationist analysis of the SBM ecosystem - Archive ouverte HAL
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2022

At the heart of the Implementation of a disruptive Sustainable Business Model (SBM): The PSS-CIRCULAR Case, a structurationist analysis of the SBM ecosystem

Résumé

The Sustainable Development is considered a major challenge of the 21st century (Jing, 2020) and several recent researches focus on sustainable innovations and how new technologies and social practices enable companies to become more sustainable (Boons & Lüdeke-Freund, 2013, Hernández-Chea et al., 2021). In this context, the Circular Economy - CE (Ghisellini, Cialani & Ulgiati, 2016) and the functional economy - FE (Stahel, 2005) appear as promising approaches to limiting raw material consumption while maintaining economic growth. The first one promotes a close product lifecycle loop by encouraging maintenance, remanufacturing of products, reuse of components, and recycling of materials or even by reducing the potential underuse of the delivered goods, where appropriate by their sharing (Agarwal & Steinmetz, 2019, Matsumoto & Umeda, 2011). The second one encourages "dematerialization" with the sale of Product-Service Systems - PSS (Kjaer et al., 2019, Tukker, 2015). With such approaches, all economic actors must have an integrative representation of their own activity within an ecosystem (Bocken et al., 2013). A radical change is now required to move from a take-make-waste linear economy to a more resource-preservation-friendly economy (Bocken et al., 2014). However, the operationalization of the change needed is sorely lacking (Bocken, Weissbrod & Antikainen, 2021). The purpose of our exploratory research is to contribute to fill this gap. Our work consists in a longitudinal case study. It will participate to overcome the lack of empirical studies in the Sustainable Business Model innovation field (Evans et al., 2017). We present a comprehensive analysis of the implementation process of a new sustainable business model ecosystem within a traditional firm in the sports equipment sector (SPORT-CORPORATE). This implementation occurs through an innovation project named PSS-CIRCULAR. The environmental benefit of this project lies in its ability to maximize the use of sports goods traditionally purchased by multiple customers. The objective of the PSS-CIRCULAR project is twofold: to allow customers to access a variety of products and to minimize the underuse of these products. Our study began in October 2020 and is still underway. Interviews are conducted regularly by two researchers with the company’s managers and the project leader. In addition, all available public documents are collected and analyzed. Our main research objective is to qualify potential generic success or risk factors that could occur during the implementation of a new Sustainable Business Model (SBM). To reach this objective, we elaborated a conceptual and theoretical framework to grasp the change process and the previous and new Business Model ecosystems. The aim of this paper is not to design a new business model, but to understand how it works in a specific environment. We place our work in the disruptive innovation field and more specifically in the ”business model innovation” identified by Markides (Markides, 2006). Sustainable business models are an emerging research field (Reinhardt et al., 2020) to cope with sustainability in organizations (Bocken, Rana & Short, 2015, Hernández-Chea et al., 2021). We are in the 7th category of SBM identified by Bocken and her colleagues (2014), “Re-purpose the business for society/environment”. To qualify the existing business model (BM) and the emerging SBM, we consider the main blocks proposed by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010) and redefined by Bouquin and Kuszla (2014): - An offer for users with direct or indirect social/environmental impacts, - A set of operational processes (internalized or not), - Key available resources (human or not), - Revenues (cash) or more exactly any kind of reward from any stakeholder, - Costs (in cash or efforts), - The resources’ financing or capturing capability which is necessary to understand the ”return” for any stakeholder. We also adopt Boons and Lüdeke-Freund's (2013) interactionist approach of BM where social, technical, and practical dimensions are embedded and co-constituted (Callon, 1991). The sociological theory of structuration (Giddens, 1984), whose benefits are recognized in both marketing and strategic fields (Williams, Davey & Johnstone, 2021, Whittington, 2010), has a double interest in this context: - It inscribes the studied phenomenon in a time and in episodes of structuring and allows to qualify the internal consistency of these periods according to three dimensions (legitimation, domination, and signification). It is important to identify steps in building the new PSS-CIRCULAR project's new SBM. - It allows to grasp the continuous interaction between individuals (for instance the project leader) and the structural context of their decisions and actions. In a first phase, we reconstruct the history, the trajectory, and the episodes of the SBM emergence. In a second phase, we analyze the traditional and innovative BM ecosystems, according to the dimensions of the structure of Giddens and in relation to the evolution of their environment. During the analysis, we identified five stages or structuration episodes for the set-up of the SBM (outbreak, pilot experience, consolidation, implementation, and integration). At each stage, the ecosystem of the involved stakeholders evolved. Different structural dimensions also were mobilized. And different elements of the business model needed to be unlocked. The first results show the interest of the structuration theory framework to analyze a transformation trajectory of an economic model at a micro level. This framework allows to articulate the contributions of sociology and strategic management. Beyond the relevance and a priori consistency of a SBM, perceived as commendable and well-designed, the understanding of the real individual objectives of decision-makers seems to be critical for the success. The role of incentive and control systems becomes fundamental, particularly when the main objectives focus on the financial return-on-investment. Secondly, the double analysis of the two BM ecosystems (SPORT-CORPORATE and PSS-CIRCULAR) with the Giddens’ framework, highlights two main risks. The first risk deals with inconsistencies in terms of shared meaning and domination facilities given to the PSS-CIRCULAR project. For instance, the key resources are not adapted to the targets, and even they are not well identified. The second risk is related to the differences in terms of the evolution of the representation systems, and in particular the environmental legitimation of the actions of each actor. Finally, in the new SBM implementation process, the rhythm of the evolution of the multiple structuration systems and the identification of the main consistency moments are key strategic activities.
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Dates et versions

hal-04163755 , version 1 (17-07-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04163755 , version 1

Citer

Catherine Kuszla, Béatrice Bellini, Hanen Kooli-Chaabane. At the heart of the Implementation of a disruptive Sustainable Business Model (SBM): The PSS-CIRCULAR Case, a structurationist analysis of the SBM ecosystem. The 7th International Conference on New Business Model, LUMSA University, Jun 2022, Rome, Italy. ⟨hal-04163755⟩
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