We aim to understand how actors respond to field logic plurality and maintain legitimacy through business model innovation. Drawing on a longitudinal field study in the fashion industry, we traced how de novo and incumbent firms incorporate circular logics in business models (for sustainability) and uncover how the intersection between issue and exchange fields creates institutional complexity and experimental spaces for business model innovation. Our findings showed a shift in the discourse on circular logic that diverted attention and resources from materials innovation (e.g., recycling) to business model innovation (e.g., circular business models). By juxtaposing institutional complexity and external pressure to maintain legitimacy, we derived four strategic business model innovation responses—preserve, detach, integrate and extend—that illuminate how actors leverage shifting logics and innovate extant business models (for sustainability). We make novel contributions to the literature on organizational fields, business models for sustainability, and business model innovation.
The role of conveners in initiating and/or leading the formation of cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) has received ample attention in the literature on partnership formation. However, what happens when two organizations jointly take up this role? This question is important in many complex partnerships, such as those on sustainable supply chains. We present a qualitative, longitudinal case study explaining how two organizations together convened the formation of a complex cross-sector partnership, and emphasize the changing roles of each organization individually and their shared relationship over time. We analyze how this process of ‘collective convening’ unfolded, how it impacted the collaboration, and how the conveners coped with the tensions brought about by the constellation of collective convening. These tensions manifested at the interorganizational level in the relationship between the two conveners, but were also fed by each convener’s organizational level dynamics, as these dynamics influenced the collective convening process. A paradox perspective is appropriate to analyze the tensions emerging from the collective convening process and the ensuing organizational response strategies. We contribute to the literature on CSPs by introducing and elaborating on the notion of ‘collective convening’, which reflects a reality in complex CSP formation but has remained largely unstudied in the existing literature on convening. Further, we show how conveners bring their organizational level dynamics to the interorganizational level and how these dynamics influence the CSP formation process in positive and negative ways.
Change has become continuous, and innovation is a primary approach for hospitality, i.e., hotel companies, to become or remain economically viable and sustainable. An increasing number of management researchers are paying more attention to workplace rather than technological innovation. This study investigates workplace innovation in the Dutch hotel industry, in three- and four-star hotels in the Netherlands, by comparing them to other industries. Two samples were questioned using the Workplace Innovation survey created by the Dutch Network of Social Innovation (NSI). The first was conducted in the hospitality industry, and these data were compared with data collected in a sample of other industries. Results suggest that greater strategic orientation on workplace innovation and talent development has a positive influence on four factors of organizational performance. Greater internal rates of change, the ability to self-organize, and investment in knowledge also had positive influences on three of the factors—growth in revenue, sustainability, and absenteeism. Results also suggest that the hospitality industry has lower workplace innovation than other industries. However, no recent research has assessed to what degree the hospitality industry fosters workplace innovation, especially in the Netherlands. Next to that, only few studies have examined management in the Dutch hotel industry, how workplace innovation is used there, and whether it improves practices.
