Circular economy as an essentially contested concept

By Jouni Korhonen, Cali Nuur, Andreas Feldmann, Seyoum Eshetu Birkie. 2018

1,234 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Circular Economy (CE) is currently a popular notion within the policy and business advocacy groups. Despite being visionary and provocative in its message, the research on the CE concept is emerging. The two intertwined objectives of the paper are; first to identify, discuss and develop the various definitions provided by the emerging literature. Secondly, to suggest an initial research approach with which research on CE can be conducted. Our analysis shows that the existing CE work is mainly done on the practical and technical levels of the actual physical flows of materials and energy in production-consumption systems. The focus of the extant literature is on concrete metrics, tools, instruments and computations. Therefore, the basic assumptions concerning the values, societal structures, cultures, underlying world-views and the paradigmatic potential of CE remain largely unexplored. We argue that CE has already become what Gallie (1955) more than six decades ago termed as an “essentially contested concept” (ECC). The paper further suggests a model for CE research that helps in the categorization, classification and organization of research and investigation on CE. The model can help in limiting the observed unbalance and enhance the contribution of the CE approach to a more sustainable global society.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ff383ef68eb7895fd350938f1d45a1448e5aa9f8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In Marketing

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

Circular cities: exploring local government strategies to facilitate a circular economy (2019, background): “(Korhonen et al., 2018, p. 547) The CE concept builds upon general systems theory and acknowledges the interconnected nature of human activity and the environmental systems that support it (Ghisellini et al., 2016; Winans et al., 2017).”
The Circular Economy: Swings and Roundabouts? (2019, background): “…is viewed as an approach to “implement the much discussed concept of Sustainable Development” (Kirchherr et al., 2017: 222) and is “an approach to […] promote Sustainable Development” yet concurrently highlight the deficiency in comprehension between the two concepts (Korhonen et al., 2018b: 544).”
Blockchain and the circular economy: potential tensions and critical reflections from practice (2020, background): “Although, we do provide a caveat beyond some of the philosophical aspects; the two fields – blockchain technology and CE – are ‘essentially contested concepts’ (Korhonen et al. 2018).”
Plastic recycling in additive manufacturing: A systematic literature review and opportunities for the circular economy (2020, background): “There have been several studies in the scientific literature about the definition (Korhonen et al., 2018a, 2018b), key elements (Ghisellini et al., 2016) and the scope (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017) of the circular economy concept in the scientific and business literature.”
Assessing scaling effects of circular economy strategies: A case study on plastic bottle closed-loop recycling in the USA PET market (2020, background): “Often considered as un umbrella concept (Blomsma & Brennan, 2017; Homrich et al., 2017; Korhonen et al., 2018), and sometimes as an offshoot of Industrial Ecology (IE) principles (Erkman, 1997; Ghisellini et al.”
The Circular Economy at a Crossroads: Technocratic Eco-Modernism or Convivial Technology for Social Revolution? (2020, background): “Although certainly contested, this CE framing, which is mainly tech-driven or techno-optimistic, is highly problematic for a number of reasons (Korhonen et al. 2018) that we can classify in three main categories.”
Restorative and regenerative: Exploring the concepts in the circular economy (2020, background): “Notably, numerous researchers underscore that the concepts of “restoration” and “regeneration” are central tenets of a CE (Jawahir & Bradley, 2016; Korhonen et al., 2018; Lieder & Rashid, 2016; Murray, Skene, & Haynes, 2017; Reike, Vermeulen, & Witjes, 2018).”
Interpreting Circularity. Circular City Representations Concealing Transition Drivers (2018, background): “Additionally, the first scientific research frameworks for circular economy start to be developed [1,8].”