- Title
- Firm’s role in sustainability transitions: business model innovation, niche upscaling, and industry reconfiguration in electricity demand-side management niche
- Creator
- Arsalan, Muhammad
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2025
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- How do ongoing sustainability transitions drive and, in turn, are driven by the business model innovation (BMI) undertaken by firms? How do firms innovate their business models to enact niche upscaling strategies? How do the interactions and collaborations among firms from various sectors through, for example, merge-and-acquisition (M&A) activities in sociotechnical niches drive the reconfiguration of specific innovation niches and industry structures to enable broader sociotechnical transitions? Presenting the findings from three studies, this thesis explores how firms adapt to and influence transitions, i.e., the microprocesses that align firm(s) agency in transition either to resist or promote a shift in the sociotechnical system. The studies in this thesis examine various aspects of this phenomenon using empirical case studies (Chapter 2&3) and social network analysis (SNA) of M&A data. All three studies are situated in the same research context i.e., demand-side management (DSM) and its related firm’s networks - an important innovation niche in sustainability transitions. The first study in Chapter 2 examines how firms’ BMI activities interact with dimensions and actors in a sociotechnical system. This research sheds three key theoretical notions about how a firm’s BMI manifests its agency to react to, align with, and impel change across its sociotechnical regime (STR). First, firms’ BMI enact interaction between different dimensions of sociotechnical regime, and also among diverse firms involved in the sociotechnical niche. Second, firms’ BM activities permeate and equilibrate changes between sociotechnical regime dimensions. Third, the findings illustrate that niche, regime, and outside firms depict ambidextrous (the ‘me-too’ and ‘bandwagon’ approaches) and evolutionary (the ‘Trojan-horse’ and ‘foot-in-door’ approaches) BMI behaviors. This strategic dynamism of firms contradicts the traditional dichotomic view of disruptive niches and passively resistant regime firms. The second study in Chapter 3 focuses on identifying firms’ activities that are geared toward upscaling niche innovations. This study makes two key contributions: first, it characterizes the unique value logic and role of business models in Demand-side management niches and clarifies how changing sociotechnical contexts promote or hinder niche progress; second, three upscaling strategies were identified i.e., user-market amplification, functional expansion, and disintermediation. Finally, the multidimensionality and dynamism of firms’ upscaling strategy adaptation are discussed. The third and final study in Chapter 4 examines alliances among diverse firms as a predominant firm-level activity and how these collaborative interactions stimulate the reconfiguration of the industry structure, driving wider sociotechnical change. Therefore, this study carried out a social network analysis (SNA) of 429 M&A data (as a form of firm’s alliances) between 714 firms from 95 sectors to illuminate the patterns of sectoral interaction in a sociotechnical niche. I visualize and identify evolutionary trends in network composition, structure, interaction, and relative positioning among diverse sectors. These patterns reflect firms’ varied interest, and how they shape knowledge flows and sociotechnical trajectories. The study identified and classified the sector’s interaction behavior as ‘mover & shaker’, ‘sideliners’, ‘cross-pollinators’, and ‘cautious outreachers’. In conclusion, the three studies in this thesis investigated how firm-level agencies go through aggregation processes leading to higher-level regime outcomes. The links between the micro-level (firms) and macro-level (regime) are shaped by firms interacting and co-engaging in strategic activities that permeate change in the socio-technical regime.
- Subject
- business model innovation; sociotechnical transitions; Multi-Level Perspective (MLP); industry reconfiguration; Distributed Energy Resources (DER); firm's agency in transitions; sustainability transition; electricity demand side management; energy transition; social network analysis; strategic niche management; niche upscaling; business model design space; transition pathways
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1517762
- Identifier
- uon:57178
- Rights
- Copyright 2025 Muhammad Arsalan
- Language
- eng
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