Next Stop: Value Creation - Analysing the Potential to Enhance Public Transport Authorities’ Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility by Providing Mobility as a Service

Abstract: Concepts such as Creating Shared Value [CSV] and Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility [SCSR] respond to a demand for organisations to take responsibility for their contributions to increasing social issues such as social exclusion or the effects of climate change. The concept of SCSR is describing activities that provide economic values for organisations while at the same time targeting social issues, thereby bringing social responsibility into the core of organisations. Still, the concept lacks empirical grounding and does not provide clear examples of defining SCSR activities. Public Transport Authorities [PTAs] are already in a social obligation to provide sustainable mobility services to the people in the area they are operating in. However, the services provided by PTAs are often unprofitable and yet not enough to fulfil all mobility needs within society. Besides that, PTAs are additionally put under pressure by the emergence of more recent and flexible mobility providers such as sharing and ride-hailing services. The concept of Mobility as a Service [MaaS] has emerged in recent years and promises to act as a solution to combine all available mobility services into one interface to provide more flexible, efficient, sustainable and personalised mobility solutions to travellers. This research considers the specific case of PTAs providing MaaS solutions since the concept is deemed to tackle many of the issues PTAs are currently dealing with. Additionally, since the concepts of MaaS and SCSR have not been combined so far, particularly not concerning PTAs, a research gap was identified. Therefore, this research aims to examine which results can be expected from a MaaS scheme provided by PTAs and how those results can contribute to enhancing the PTA’s SCSR, thereby providing empirical grounding for the concept of SCSR. Qualitative interviews of organisations that have been involved in MaaS trials and projects provide the empirical data, which is analysed with the help of a conceptual framework developed by the authors. The conclusion of this empirical research provides a tangible example of how SCSR activities can be implemented in the case of MaaS for PTAs, thereby closing the identified research gap and contributing to SCSR literature. Based on the conceptual framework, the SCSR of a PTA can be enhanced in the three levels of Reconceiving Products and Markets, Redefining the Organisation’s Value Creation and Enabling Local Cluster Development. Additionally, the research provides managerial and policy implications that would help to successfully design MaaS concepts in the future.