Towards a taxonomy for design options of social networking technologies in sustainable business models

Abstract

Social networking technologies such as social media, crowd concepts, or gamification rep-resent key resources for the integration of customers, value network partners, and the community into sustainable business models. However, there is a lack of understanding of how sustainable enterprises apply such technologies. To close this gap, we propose a taxonomy of design options for social networking technologies in sustainable business models. Our taxonomy comprises eight di-mensions that deal with relevant questions of the design of social networking technologies. When creating our taxonomy, we built on existing literature and use cases and involved experienced prac-titioners in the field of sustainable business models for the validation of our taxonomy. In this way, our study contributes to knowledge on the use of social networking technologies in sustainable business models and how such technologies influence the boundaries of sustainable business mod-els. Likewise, we provide practical insights into the use of social networking technologies in sustainable business models.