Implementing circular economy strategies during product development
Résumé
Although recent circular economy literature has emphasized the strategic role played by circular product design in private sector organizations, strategic management literature has so far overlooked the management implications of integrating circular economy strategies into new or existing products. As a result, the implementation of circular product design in private sector organizations remains unclear. The present paper aims to describe the managerial factors necessary for the implementation of value retention strategies during design and to designate a range of conditions under which each factor may arise. Examples of implementation processes (n = 24) were collected via expert interviews and compiled within a comprehensive framework based on general morphological analysis. Hence, implementation processes are represented as a combination of a limited number of process conditions. The framework is also used to describe a taxonomy of process configurations using hierarchical clustering, which indicates a strong influence of corporate sustainability maturity profiles in the implementation configurations observed. The contents of the present work help bridge the gap between strategic management and circular product design literature by providing the building blocks necessary for the integration of value-retention strategies during product planning and development.