Business Models in Water Supply Companies—Key Implications of Trust

Abstract

Currently, trust is one of the key factors that ensures the acceptable mechanisms of economic and social relationships. It is not only an element of correct communication, but also a factor in inter-organizational bonds and a source of social dialogue. Trust has become a factor in the creation of value, as well as a key component of the conceptualization and operationalization of business models. It has revealed many problems at the strategic level, in the water sector in particular. From this perspective, trust is a major factor of strategies, models, and business processes which are currently being built. New types of business models that emerge have also started to include trust as part of their configuration. This is the case in the construction and implementation of social business models. A social business model can be understood as a business model whose factors that stimulate development include social aspects expressed in balancing economic, environmental, and social issues with the involvement of communities and their dynamic communication focused on the selected attributes of business models that stimulate growth and that are conducive to achieving success, expressed by economic and/or social profit. The satisfaction of stakeholders with such a solution is another condition for embedding this solution in the sphere of the social economy. In this approach, trust, which stimulates the growth of social and economic value in the component structure of the social business model, becomes particularly important. The aim of the paper is to present the place and role of trust as a key component of social business models. The scope of the paper includes research into public water sector industry companies located in the Province of Silesia and their social business models, with a focus on defining the position of trust among other attributes of these business models. The authors put forward a hypothesis that trust is a crucial component of the social business models of water supply companies that operate at the intersection of the market and social economy. Trust also helps companies from the water supply sector achieve both social and economic effects. It also becomes a source of reverse market polarization, where the value of a social business model materializes to create social and environmental effects without detriment to the economic effects.