The shift from owning to sharing: employing action research to facilitate SMEs’ business model transformation

Abstract

The sharing economy has witnessed tremendous growth inamultitude of industries around the world over the past decade. Access to, and a more sustainable use of, resources, cost saving potential, and a multitude of strategic benefits have been identified as attractive opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to engage in business-to-business (B2B) sharing with some frustration by governments, researchers and practitioners that so little actual B2B sharing can be observed in industry practice. It remains a strategic challenge for SMEs to manage the shift from resource ownership to sharing since that transition requires a permanent change in their business model. In light of the transformational nature of this qualitative research gap, an Action Research methodology has been developed and implemented in partnership with a selected sample of Swiss SMEs favourably inclined towards B2B sharing activities. While discussing how Action Research might bridge the research gap and develop tangible, empirically grounded management recommendations, this paper also contributes specific Action Research methodology for other cases of transformational nature which present an ever more frequent and common scenario in business management research.