Orchestrating Dynamic Capabilities for Sustainable Business Model Innovation in Hotels: A Sequential Conceptual Framework

Malaysia’s hotel industry faces growing pressure to improve environmental management while maintaining service quality, operational efficiency, guest value, and long-term competitiveness. Although the dynamic capabilities view explains firm adaptation through the sensing–seizing–transforming framework, it provides a limited explanation of how hotels move from recognising sustainability pressures to implementing sustainable business model innovation. This conceptual article develops a Sequential Capability Orchestration Framework to explain how sustainable business model innovation unfolds in hotels. The framework proposes that business model innovation develops through five interdependent stages: sensing capability, organisational learning capability, seizing capability, resource orchestration capability, and transformation capability. Organisational learning converts sensed sustainability signals into actionable knowledge, while resource orchestration translates strategic commitment into coordinated execution and embedded operational change. By integrating configurational logic, the article argues that sustainable business model innovation depends not on isolated green practices or individual capabilities, but on the coherent alignment of the full capability system. The article contributes to the dynamic capabilities view by specifying transition mechanisms between capability stages and explaining business model innovation as a sequential and configurational process. Practically, the framework offers hotel managers a structured pathway for translating sustainability pressures into viable business model innovation, improved environmental performance, and long-term competitive positioning.

dynamic capabilities, Sustainable business model innovation, hotel management, resource orchestration, environmental management

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