Business model in motion: dynamics of activities, artifacts, cognition, and structures

Abstract

Research on business models (BMs) has yielded an extensive production of studies covering a broad range of topics. Nonetheless, previous reviews acknowledged a serious issue of conceptual fragmentation, marked by the existence of well-established yet conflicting definitions. In reaction to this, there have been ongoing, albeit so far unsuccessful, appeals for a one-size-fits-all approach to unify these differing conceptualizations. We suggest a different solution to the field’s conceptual fragmentation by advocating for a multimodal approach. We posit that the field’s diversity of perspectives is not an issue for the field, but an asset that should be protected and nurtured. To do so, we reframe what so far has been understood as conceptually divergent perspectives on the BM, as multiple co-existing ontological modes of the BM. Such BM modes are not competing and therefore do not require unification into one. Tackling fragmentation with multimodal methodology approach implies reconnecting distinct BM modes to arrive at a more inclusive appreciation of the BM conceptual heterogeneity. We accomplish this through an structured review of 555 empirical BM articles from top-quality business and management journals. Our thematic template analysis of BM definitions used in these studies has led to a BM framework of the dynamics between four closely interrelated co-existent BM modes. We use a grammatical provocation to emphasize that a BM are all four modes simultaneously. We propose multimodal BM studies as “the new frontier” for BM research and illustrate how pushing past this frontier offers substantial BM field-shaping opportunities.

Date of Award	15 Jul 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Nottingham
Supervisor	Haibo Zhou (Supervisor), Jin Chen (Supervisor), Peter Hofman (Supervisor) & Oliver Laasch (Supervisor)