Open Access

Charlotte Ring

• Social businesses have a great positive impact on communities and are a sustainable way to do business today and in the future. This impact can be amplified through the means of digitalization. In the past, traditional for-profit business models have been used to understand the structures of business operations. However, the underlying business model of digital social businesses has not yet been explored. This study presents a building block analysis of business models and a subsequent typology. Digital and social business models are identified via a literature review. The building block analysis encompasses an assessment of the individual business activities contained in the business models. The typology is developed from existing literature utilizing a matrix for the evaluation of digital social businesses. Additionally, five semi-structured expert interviews are conducted to inform, extend, or content the findings of this study. To this end, an inductive coding procedure is applied to the transcribed interviews for the detection of themes within the text. This study contributes to social business model research by providing a first insight into the unique building blocks of digital social business models. It also creates a typology tool based on two parameters, which enables the comparison of digital social businesses.