We aim to understand the interaction between shifting organizational field logics and field actors’ responses to reconcile logic plurality and maintain legitimacy through business model innovation. Drawing on a multimethod, longitudinal field study in the fashion industry, we traced how de novo and incumbent firms integrate circular logics in business models (for sustainability) and uncover how productive tensions in field logics lead to experimental spaces for business model innovation. Our findings showed a shift in the discourse on circular logic that diverted attention and resources from materials innovation (e.g. recycling) to business model innovation (e.g. circular business models). By juxtaposing the degree of field logic tension and the degree of business model innovation, we derive four types of business model hybridization responses that actors engaged in to maintain legitimacy – constrained, limited, integrated, and expanded. Our study generates new insights on business models for sustainability as vehicles for organizational field change.
Both research and practice acknowledge that an increasing number of business models are realized by multiple organizations in innovation ecosystems. Little research addresses how organizations develop these business models jointly over time and balance the tensions that occur from the divergent goals and interests of each actor. We propose that the concept of value valuation may be helpful in understanding this process. Value valuation is a balancing process that takes place between actors in an innovation ecosystem when collaborating around a business model for sustainability, making sure that the benefits of ecosystem membership outweighs its costs, leading to continuing support of the initiative. Based on four smart city projects for a circular economy we find that value is valuated along two dimensions: economic, environmental and social value; and mutual and individual value. Value valuation takes place in iterative cycles and is characterized by a number of mechanisms, including action-based experimenting. These findings open up a research agenda to study the dynamics of ecosystem-based business model development.
This paper presents challenges in city logistics for circular supply chains of e-e-waste. Efficient e-waste management is one of the strategies to save materials, critical minerals, and precious metals. E-waste collection and recycling have gained attention recently due to lower collection and recycling rates. However, implementing circular urban supply chains is a significant economic transformation that can only work if coordination decisions are solved between the actors involved. On the one hand, this requires the implementation of efficient urban collection technologies, where waste collection companies collaborate with manufacturers, urban waste treatment specialists, and city logistics service providers supported by digital solutions for visibility and planning. On the other hand, it also requires implementing urban and regional ecosystems connected by innovative CO2-neutral circular city logistics systems. These systems must smoothly and sustainably manage the urban and regional flow of resources and data, often at a large scale and with interfaces between industrial processes, private, and public actors. This paper presents future research questions from a city logistics perspective based on a European project aimed at developing a blueprint for systemic solutions for the circularity of plastics from applications of rigid PU foams used as insulation material in refrigerators.
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