The transition to circular manufacturing systems (CMS) is crucial for achieving sustainable growth, addressing the environmental concerns and resource scarcity challenges. Shifting towards CMS requires a systemic approach that integrates value proposition models, product design, and supply chains (SCs). Circular supply chains (CSCs) emerge as a core pillar of CMS, incorporating value delivery, use, recovery, and reuse. CSCs are inherently more complex and dynamic than linear SCs requiring a holistic analysis approach to capture their complex and dynamic attributes. This research proposes an integrated analysis framework combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to explore the complexities and dynamics of CSCs and assess their economic, environmental, and technical performance. Through the lens of two different CMS implementation case studies, one in automotive parts remanufacturing and one in white goods manufacturing, this research illustrates the framework's applicability. In the automotive case, centralizing core management activities was found to improve economic performance by 50-54 %. However, the introduction of regional logistics hubs, while economically efficient, led to a 20 % increase in CO2-equivalent emissions. On the other hand, the white goods case study highlighted the trade-offs in centralizing end-of-life recovery facilities, where financial savings of up to 60 % were offset by increased transportation costs and increased CO2 emissions. The analysis of CSCs in these two distinct manufacturing sectors underscores the relevance and flexibility of the proposed framework, providing decisionmakers with a tool to examine how different CSCs configurations and strategies impact overall performance. This guidance is crucial for developing optimal CSCs design and implementation strategies.

Closing the loop for resource efficiency is a well-known practice in the industry. To concretize the circular economy implementation strategies, closed-loop thinking requires innovation and adaptation. Circular supply chains (CSCs) are one of the key enablers in closing the loop by design or intention for value recovery and profit maximization. CSC is an emerging area, and the view of CSC where forward and reverse supply chain is seamlessly integrated with the overall aim to achieve system-wide circularity is missing in the academic debate. By offering a cross-functional perspective of CSC, this paper presents a CSC guiding framework to structure and understand the underlying complexities and highlight the crucial elements of the CSC implementation. Thus, this framework lays the basis for CSC within the systemic implementation of CE by closing the loop by design or intention. The framework categorizes the CSC into four building blocks, namely, systemic approach, main drivers, levels of decision making, and mechanisms to manage the full loop closure and minimize the inherent uncertainties of a complex system. The building blocks of the framework are synthesized from various streams of supply chain literature and recurring concepts in the circular economy literature. The CSC framework applicability is illustrated using two industrial cases that are transitioning towards the circular economy.

This chapter explores global apparel consumption and its dependence on production supply chains in low-income countries where unsustainable and informal market practices are rampant. Recent life-cycle studies of garments show that over 80 percent of apparel's environmental impact stems from the production phase. Up to 80 percent of this production is outsourced to the informal sector in developing countries. Besides the environmental impact, apparel manufacturing also affects sustainable development and includes many social issues related to poor working conditions and below living wages etc. Along with the growth of fast-fashion consumption, apparel production – with its high dependence on low-income countries with coal-based energy sources, highly complex and untransparent industry structure with many tiers of suppliers, and widespread use of informal market practices– is the reason why the environmental impact of the industry is accelerating rather than improving. Measures to mitigate the negative environmental and social impacts can spur a movement away from informal practices but can also risk moving informal practices further out in the tiers of the value chain and to domestic production, making such practices less transparent and the informally employed more vulnerable to lack of social security.

The sustainable consumption and production (SCP) agenda has been a hypernym for various efforts and approaches to address the growing concerns on bio-diversity loss, resource availability, climate change, and mounting waste problems on land and in seas.

This study compares contrasting models of how community concerns are addressed in two mining districts: in Sweden, a welfare state setting where social development concerns are the responsibility of the state, and South Africa, a developing country, where expectations are oriented towards companies taking on significant portions of such responsibilities. Both countries have in place strict environmental regulations for mining, and residents in both districts perceive environmental impacts as a company responsibility. However, whereas there is significant tolerance for environmental disturbances in Sweden, such sentiment is missing in South Africa. When it comes to community welfare, companies operating in South Africa feel obliged to undertake voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)-related efforts, yet are often met with criticism and distrust, whereas in Sweden, companies tend to be supported, despite not being directly involved in providing any significant welfare-related services. We argue that calls for mining companies to take on a greater responsibility for local communities can be problematic and must be evaluated with care: in welfare states, doing so may be at odds with existing and functioning societal models, whereas in other settings it may lead to unclear responsibilities for societal outcomes. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Science and technology play an important role in changing the nature of fashion. This chapter examines this role, looking at four major phases of the garment life cycle and examining some of the key developments in the technology of fashion and the science of understanding its impacts.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) was historically a business-oriented idea that companies should voluntarily improve their social and environmental practices. More recently, CSR has increasingly attracted governments' attention, and is now promoted in public policy, especially in the European Union (EU). Conflicts can arise, however, when advanced welfare states introduce CSR into public policy. The reason for such conflict is that CSR leaves key public welfare issues to the discretion of private business. This voluntary issue assignment contrasts starkly with advanced welfare states' traditions favoring negotiated agreements and strong regulation to control corporate conduct. This article analyzes the conflicts and compatibilities arising when advanced welfare states introduce CSR, focusing on how the two traditions diverge and on how conflicts are reconciled. Empirically the study focuses on four Nordic countriesDenmark, Finland, Norway, and Swedenwidely recognized as the most advanced welfare states, and increasingly as leaders in CSR public policy. From interviews of 55 officials of government ministries, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions, and employer associations, the authors conclude that tension indeed exists between CSR public policies and advanced welfare state traditions in all four countries. Whereas CSR's aims are compatible with Nordic institutional traditions, the means promoted in CSR is in conflict with such Nordic traditions as corporatist agreements and rights-based welfare state regulation of social and environmental issues. There is harmony of goals, but conflict in means between the four Nordic countries studied.

The significance of consumer perceived value for marketing decisions and the link between value creation and business long-term success is widely acknowledged in the literature. However, no study has yet assessed empirically if different perception of value exist for physical products compared to their digital counterparts. A perceived value model consisting of five constructs –price value, quality value, epistemic value, emotional value and social value, is applied. Further, a digital basic version is tested against an ownership-enhanced digital version and one where the perceived effort to gain and handle the digital version is reduced. A significant increase for digital products by improving the ownership notion or reducing the perceived effort was not to be found. Nevertheless, tendencies support the general idea and prepare the ground for further investigations. This thesis progresses the value literature through increasing our comprehension of how individual value dimensions differ for physical and digital products. Based on the primary data gathered by a customer survey, the findings support that different perceptions of value exist for physical products compared to their digital counterparts, particularly for epistemic, emotional and quality value. This calls for the use of differentiated value-based marketing strategies for a company to be successful in both, the real and the digital world.

This chapter puts focus on and relates to three central concepts “sustainability”, “mobility”, and “customer value”. The results from two long-term lines of research and two research programs are combined in the chapter. The first focuses on the effects of the use of new wireless communication and information on organizations in terms of changed “mobility” of people and artifacts within and between organizations. The second research area addressed is that of social and environmental enterprise and business. The chapter has the aim and ambition to contribute to a conceptual discussion on sustainability, mobility, and value. Based on the discussion, the chapter presents a set of propositions to help advance research in this relatively new research field. Short empirical examples are presented, followed by a concluding discussion and a set of propositions for further research.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) was historically a business-oriented idea that companies should voluntarily improve their social and environmental practices. More recently, CSR has increasingly attracted governments’ attention, and is now promoted in public policy, especially in the European Union (EU). Conflicts can arise, however, when advanced welfare states introduce CSR into public policy. The reason for such conflict is that CSR leaves key public welfare issues to the discretion of private business. This voluntary issue assignment contrasts starkly with advanced welfare states’ traditions favoring negotiated agreements and strong regulation to control corporate conduct. This article analyzes the conflicts and compatibilities arising when advanced welfare states introduce CSR, focusing on how the two traditions diverge and on how conflicts are reconciled. Empirically the study focuses on four Nordic countries—Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden—widely recognized as the most advanced welfare states, and increasingly as leaders in CSR public policy. From interviews of 55 officials of government ministries, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions, and employer associations, the authors conclude that tension indeed exists between CSR public policies and advanced welfare state traditions in all four countries. Whereas CSR’s aims are compatible with Nordic institutional traditions, the means promoted in CSR is in conflict with such Nordic traditions as corporatist agreements and rights-based welfare state regulation of social and environmental issues. There is harmony of goals, but conflict in means between the four Nordic countries studied.