Our research

Designing the Internal Organization for Circular Economy Innovation: A Knowledge Governance and Microfoundations Approach

Stefano Pascucci, Yat Ming Ooi, Kenneth Husted

Firms implementing circular economy principles in their innovation processes necessitates the redesign of well-established processes and practices. This redesign leverages the various knowledge and practice domains within the firm, at different levels and scales. Despite the importance of knowledge to innovation management, there is a lack of research in innovation studies examining how firms could manage different knowledge flows within the circular economy context. In most research in this area, studies tend to assume that existence of governance mechanisms to manage these knowledge flows.

However, given the need for redesigning or introducing entirely new business models to incorporate circularity principles, there is also a need to understand the internal organization that facilitates such changes. In this paper, we conceptualize how organizational mechanisms governing knowledge processes influence firms' adoption of circular-oriented innovation processes. We conclude that firms go through various stages and levels in the adoption process. These levels are linked through situational, action-formation, and transformational mechanisms that govern supportive knowledge processes. We contribute the innovation management literature by linking circular innovation process adoption to knowledge governance and the underlying knowledge processes. Specifically, we highlight the microfoundations nuances of circular-oriented innovation processes adoption that are pertinent to organizing innovation activities within the firm.

Navigating tensions of sustainable supply chains in times of multiple crises: A systematic literature review

Sunny Kareem, Julia A. Fehrer, Timofey Shalpegin, Christina Stringer

The challenges posed by multi-crisis environments, such as pandemics and geopolitical uncertainties, create significant opportunities for supply chains (SC) to enhance their sustainability, resilience, and agility, thereby developing a strategic advantage. However, seizing these opportunities is not without its challenges; critical tensions inevitably arise.

This paper, based on a systematic review of 287 SC studies, identifies and discusses five key tensions: (1) increased trade-offs between sustainability and efficiency; (2) competing priorities between SC sustainability and resilience; (3) mismatched sustainability expectations causing stakeholder pressure; (4) conflicting demands between global and sustainable operations; and (5) unintended consequences of technological innovation, disadvantaging stakeholders with limited resources and capabilities.

To mitigate these tensions while leveraging on the opportunities, the study proposes several strategic pathways, including adopting circular economy principles, optimizing inventory and distribution management, employing holistic measurement and forecasting, balancing risk-hedging with proactive risk management, fostering inclusive stakeholder engagement, balancing globalization and regionalization, and integrating advanced digital technologies alongside with SC ecosystem wide change management. These strategies offer practical guidance for building sustainable and crises-ready SCs and set the stage for an extensive research agenda to further explore SC sustainability in multi-crisis environments.

A Typology of Circular Sport Business Models: Enabling Sustainable Value Co-Creation in the Sport Industry

Anna Gerke, Julia A. Fehrer, Maureen Benson-Rea, and Brian P McCullough

As a new field, sport ecology explores the impact sport has on the natural environment and how sport organizations and individuals can promote sustainability. However, a critical element is still missing in the sport ecology discourse—the link between organizations’ sustainability efforts and their value co-creation processes. The circular economy can provide this link by decoupling the value co-creation of sport business models from their environmental impact and resource depletion.

Rethinking service in a circular economy

Julia A. Fehrer and Stephen L. Vargo

The circular economy (CE) narrative promotes closed-loop systems to decouple economic activity from resource depletion. However, despite increasing scholarly interest, CE remains theoretically under-explored, often guided by practical issues and theories-in-use, that are implicitly embedded in the industrial paradigm of linear value chain thinking. There is a growing number of CE scholars calling for a ‘Great Reset’ of traditional economic frameworks, suggesting a departure from capitalism. Instead of a reset, this paper proposes a recalibration of assumptions foundational to traditional economic thought and suggests an alternative economic exchange model for CE—a service-dominant logic.

Shaping Circular Service Ecosystems

Julia Fehrer, Joya Kemper, Jonathan Baker

The circular economy (CE) presents an alternative perspective to the linear take-make-use-dispose model prevalent in industrial value chains. CE envisions economies operating like natural ecosystems—restorative and waste-free, underpinned by principles such as reuse, repair, share, and pay-for-use. Surprisingly, although these principles align with the fundamentals of service management, there is limited scholarly exploration of CE within service research. Leveraging service-dominant logic, this study introduces the concept of circular service ecosystems as ideal types of service ecosystems, regenerative, and embedded within nature, where (material, intellectual, digital and financial) resources flow seamlessly within and between nested systems without creating any waste or leakage.

By analyzing 3,178 blogs penned by CE experts over 7 years and conducting in-depth interviews with industry specialists, this study offers two significant contributions. Firstly, it presents a process framework elucidating the transition towards circular service ecosystems. This framework explains the emergence of novel circular solutions and service ecosystem properties through processes of de- and re-institutionalization. Secondly, the study identifies six shaping strategies that actors can apply to drive circular service ecosystem transitions. The study concludes by emphasizing the importance of circular service ecosystems and CE as promising areas for future service research, providing a comprehensive research agenda to explore these areas in depth.

The Wonderful Circles of Oz: The circular economy story

Ken Webster

The call for a new, more just, more distributive economic story and system is now louder and more urgent than ever. The Wonderful Circles of Oz provides both the framework and solutions for navigating towards an effective circular economy - the gateway to an abundant, autonomous and democratic future.

A systemic logic for circular business models

Julia Fehrer

While social and circular business models are viewed as important devices to improve humanity’s wellbeing, their adoption rates have been somewhat disappointing. The academic literature often contributes these low adoption rates to innovation failures of firms and redirects social and circular business models toward a stronger profit-orientation. Much of this work is grounded in a Porterian value chain logic that, arguably, overemphasizes economic goals at the expense of social and sustainability goals. In contrast, this study promotes an institutional perspective that shows that all business practices are part of larger societal and ecological systems, so that a real transition toward sustainability demands joint institutional alignment processes which balance the adaptive tensions between social mission, environmental stewardship and economic growth.

Designing a Circular Contract Template: Insights from the Fairphone-as-a-Service project

Stefano Pascucci

Servitization, longevity and modularity are key aspects of circular business models and business model innovation. However, the role of legal and contractual aspects of circular business models, especially of those that are based on service are not well understood. In this paper, we present an in-depth analysis of a case study drawing on data stemming from the Fairphone-as-a-Service project to define key elements for a Circular Service Contract Template.

Building Better - Less - Different: Circular Construction and Circular Economy

Ken Webster, Felix Heisel and Dirk E. Hebel

Sustainability is to become the guiding principle of social action and economic activity. At the same time, its ways and means are far from clear. As a holistic praxis, sustainability must combine technical and material as well as social, economic, ecological and also ethical strategies, which have multiple complex interactions and all too often also conflicting goals and priorities. In no other field can these be better observed, addressed and influenced than in architecture and building.

Going beyond waste reduction: Exploring tools and methods for circular economy adoption in small-medium enterprises

Stefano Pascucci

This study explores the ‘how and why’ of circular economy adoption for small and medium sized companies (SMEs). We compare opportunities and challenges of tools and methods to evaluate circularity drawing from interviews, facilitated workshops and tool demonstrations across the agri-food sector. We find that with some adaptation, current management tools such as value mapping, life cycle assessment, modelling & simulation, and capability maturity can assist SMEs towards becoming more circular and sustainable. Our framework presents a phased transition of CE tool deployment that encourages SMEs to go beyond waste reduction, and connect with social and environmental contexts, capturing value through circular practice from emerging servicised markets, digital technologies, and regional collaboration.

Related links