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Sustainable business model: A review and framework development

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Abstract

Integrating sustainability into business functions of organisations is a challenge faced by practitioners. They need to understand what aspects must be considered to achieve effective sustainability implementation. Few studies review current sustainable business models and reveal essential aspects that must be possessed by these models. This study aims to discuss the available sustainable business models and identify the main features of the models. Conceptual research is applied in this study to synthesise the current sustainable business models in the literature. The study reveals nine main aspects to consider, including sustainability, information technology, circular economy, value chain, core values, value creation, organisational values, performance management, and stakeholder engagement. The proposed framework would help the practitioners to capture important aspects of the sustainability implementation. These aspects would guide them to effectively embed sustainability into an organisation's business functions and fulfil stakeholder expectations.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been supported by the EU project "Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL", Project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000456 funded by EU "CZ Operational Programme Research, Development and Education", Priority 1: Strengthening capacity for quality research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory – SPIL, NETME Centre, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology - VUT Brno, Technická 2896/2, 61669, Brno, Czech Republic

    Feybi Ariani Goni, Abdoulmohammad Gholamzadeh Chofreh & Jiří Jaromír Klemeš

  2. Faculty of Business Administration, Islamic Azad University, Hamadan Branch, Hamadan, Iran

    Zohreh Estaki Orakani

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Buein Zahra Technical University, Buein Zahra, Iran

    Mehdi Davoudi

  4. Department of Marketing, College of Business Administration, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 33813, USA

    Abbas Mardani

Authors
  1. Feybi Ariani Goni
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  2. Abdoulmohammad Gholamzadeh Chofreh
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  3. Zohreh Estaki Orakani
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  4. Jiří Jaromír Klemeš
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  5. Mehdi Davoudi
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  6. Abbas Mardani
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Correspondence to Abdoulmohammad Gholamzadeh Chofreh.

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Goni, F.A., Gholamzadeh Chofreh, A., Estaki Orakani, Z. et al. Sustainable business model: A review and framework development. Clean Techn Environ Policy 23, 889–897 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-020-01886-z

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