Building Social Business Models: Lessons from the Grameen Experience

Yunus, Muhammad; Moingeon, Bertrand; Lehmann-Ortega, Laurence

doi:10.1016/j.lrp.2009.12.005

Cited by 1,104 publications

(1,016 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Some lines of thought claim that profit distribution fits the logic of the market and would not preclude business growth; on the contrary, it would create conditions to receive more foreign investment (Chu, 2005;Young & Lecy, 2012). However, the approach of Yunus, Moingeon and Lehmann-Ortega (2010) and Yunus (2006) opposes this view as it argues that social businesses should maximize social wealth and not individual wealth. Therefore, Yunus and his research colleagues advocate total reinvestment of profits in the venture.…”

Section: Social Business: Hybridism Rationale and Management Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The International Growth of a Social Business: A Case Study

2015

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In developing countries, initiatives have often been undertaken in order to fight social and environmental problems. Since the 1990s, an increase can be seen in corporate social responsibility actions, as well as increasingly strong activities by civil society organizations. Tweenty years ago, companies and civil society organizations stood wide apart from each other, with often conflicting agendas and resistance to mutual collaboration. This reality has changed significantly. Besides the phenomenon of cross-sector partnerships, we can also observe the expansion of a particular organization type, i.e., the social business, which combines two objectives that were previously seen as incompatible: financial sustainability and the generation of social value. This article aims to discuss the factors that influence the results of a social business operating in three countries: Botswana, Brazil and Jordan. The results allow understanding the challenges involved in constructing social businesses in developing countries as well as a better understanding of the very nature of those businesses, considering the social realities where they operate.

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Section: Social Business: Hybridism Rationale and Management Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

The International Growth of a Social Business: A Case Study

2015

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“…Sustainable Business model innovation can be an important leverage for change in a company to be considered sustainable and for coping with the emerging challenges in this context. This furthermore entails an expansion of the business model scope beyond green (FORA 2010), product-service-systems (Tukker 2004) or social issues (Yunus et al 2010;Bocken et al 2014). Brocken et al developed a set of sustainable business model archetypes clustered by technological, social and organisational perspective for innovations as shown in Fig.…”

Section: Supporting and Hindering Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integration of Sustainability into the Corporate Strategy

Oertwig

Galeitzke

Schmieg

et al. 2017

Sustainable Manufacturing

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In order to successfully achieve sustainable corporate development, enterprises have to define and implement a pragmatic strategy. In that pursuit, the discussion of motivation and reasoning behind incorporating sustainability strategies serves as a prelude to the thematic examination of challenges and courses of action in corporate strategy development and implementation. Especially in the context of sustainability, additional legislative and stakeholder requirement considerations make managing these tasks effectively, however, much more challenging. The firm's overall objectives thus become multidimensional and have to be broken down to the individual departments and business fields. Consequently, considerable effort has to be devoted to the planning, measurement and evaluation, steering and control as well as optimisation and communication processes of the holistically defined corporate value creation. Furthermore, a solution for enterprise sustainability management and its evaluation is necessary for ultimately balancing economic, ecological and social performance factors, to ensure optimized decision-making. towards future generations is emerging, as insights on the long-term effects of over-exploitation and environmental pollution are increasing. In the context of the evolution of this responsibility towards internal and external stakeholders, enterprises are confronted with the imminent challenge of adapting strategic orientation and operative value creation accordingly. The linkage between the economic, ecological and social perspectives of the interaction of enterprises with their environment however, poses unique challenges in terms of potential internal conflicts of objectives. At the same time, it is questionable to what extent the attainment can be related to the three perspectives of sustainability. Thus long-term strategic orientation has to be recognised as a premise for sustainable development, so that potential short-term performance discrepancies are not misinterpreted as deficits, or implied as representing poor decision-making. This is assuming that sustainability is more than an ideological construct for the conscious influence and control of human and entrepreneurial behaviour. Instead, it has to be conditional to certain criteria and traceable or ascertainable. Numerous approaches for operationalising sustainable management are therefore focused on indicators, but remain, however, limited in their extent or integrity in order to avoid complexity. KeywordsThe three-dimensional differentiated approach requires the simultaneous safeguarding of the economic, ecological and social capacity of the respective system and its environment for both the current and future generations (Dyllick and Hockerts 2002). Building on the definition of the German Bundestag, safeguarding economic performance is herein based on ensuring an adequate competitive situation as a driver of innovation and as a price-building mechanism, without however at the same time limiting the welfare of the individual inv...

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“…There are also internationally operating, profit seeking companies who specialize in (high tech) UA, but have little or no connection with local communities. There is a belief among scholars of social innovation and sustainable business models that sustainable enterprise is-and perhaps should be-primarily interested in generating ecological and social values and in last instance only a 'moderate' profit at most [52,53]. Without having any problems with voluntary community projects, economic viability becomes an issue once the glocal garden is to become a challenge for the worldwide food regime.…”

Section: The Glocal Garden As An Economic Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivating the Glocal Garden

Hisschemöller

2016

CIS

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This paper addresses the question under which conditions small-scale urban agriculture (UA) initiatives can accelerate a sustainability transition of the global food system. It develops the notion of a glocal garden, a large number of likeminded local initiatives with a global impact and forms of worldwide collaboration. Taking a transition perspective, the glocal garden, producing vegetables and fruits, is a niche that has to overcome barriers to compete with the dominant food regime. Since a sustainability transition restructures (policy) sectors, institutional domains including knowledge systems, the paper explores which innovations are needed for the glocal garden to succeed. It discusses the glocal garden as an environmental, a social, an economic and a global project. As an environmental project, the glocal garden will link sustainable production of food with renewable energy production. As a social project, it will be organized into a consumers' cooperative. As an economic project, it will strive for profit, increasing the yield in a sustainable manner. As a global project, it will enhance collaboration between local cooperatives in the North and the South, as well as with rural agriculture. Under these conditions, the glocal garden can develop into a power, able to resist a possible future food regime that splits societies, in terms of quality standards and food products, into haves and have-nots.

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Building Social Business Models: Lessons from the Grameen Experience

Cited by 1,104 publications

References 24 publications

The International Growth of a Social Business: A Case Study

The International Growth of a Social Business: A Case Study

Integration of Sustainability into the Corporate Strategy

Cultivating the Glocal Garden

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