12 5
6
Summary and Implications
6 Summary and Implications
The following section summarizes the results and insights gained in the analysis
as described in the previous chapters of this thesis. Later, the implications are
presented for both research as well as management practice.
6.1 Summary of Results
6.1 Summary of Results
The objectives of this study are to gain a deeper understanding of circular economy
and its implementation in practice, identify impacts the implementation of circular
economy has on organizations, and investigate the challenges the organizations
face during and after implementation.
In order to answer the first question of how the circular economy is implemented,a framework consisting of seven circular economy approaches was developed for
this study and used in the case analysis. The first step in the development of this
framework was to identify relevant types of innovation to transform a business
towards a circular economy. The relevant innovation types for the framework are:
product, process, and organizational innovation. In the second step a study from
Accenture (2014) identifying five circular economy ‘business models’ has been used
as inspiration to further specify the framework. These business models were seen
as descriptions of the circular economy on a practical level (business models are:
circular supplies, resources recovery, product life extension, sharing platform, and
product as a service). In order to include these practical descriptions on how the
circular economy can be implemented into a business, they were assigned to the
three innovation types in the framework. The result is a framework consisting of
seven ‘circular economy approaches’ that were used for a profound in-case analysis
and a structured categorization (as depicted in Table 22).
© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2018
L. Frodermann, Exploratory Study on Circular EconomyApproaches,
Wirtschaftsethik in der globalisierten Welt, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-21949-9_6