INSTITUTIONALISED UNSUSTAINABILITY: MNCs' damaging business models

Abstract

Sustainability has been a widely researched topic during the last few decades and as the environmental, social and economical issues keep cumulating, the need for solutions has been growing as well. Multinational corporations are often acknowledged for their big profits and dominating position in global markets, but concerns for their unsustainable behaviour has been increasing lately. This unsustainable behaviour includes the exploitation of natural resources, unethical use of cheap labour, avoidance of tax liability, image-washing for a more positive connotation and polluting in less regulates countries, among many other things.

This thesis attempts to investigate MNCs’ business models in order to find out how unsustainability has institutionalised and embedded in their core practices. Two sub-questions were chosen to help analyse the main research question. First one is what are business models and what makes them unsustainable, and second one explores the ways how MNCs’ unsustainable business models are institutionalised. In this thesis business models are discussed and viewed through a theoretical framework that divides the components of a business models into three value elements: value proposition, value creation and delivery, and value capture.

The findings of this thesis imply that there is a variety of damaging, highly unsustainable practices existing in MNCs’ business models. Some MNC’s tend to take advantage of their size to hide extensive social and environmental exploitation and usually multinationals will not be held accountable, because of their dominating position or the lack of laws and regulations for instance. These institutionalised models need to be broken down and addressed, so that a truly sustainable future is possible to achieve.