Governance structures for sustainable supply chain transport system networks

Research Project, 2025 – 2026

This collaborative project studies governance structures for circularity initiatives in the automotive transport sector. A central ambition of circularity initiatives is to reduce waste by reusing, refurbishing, remanufacturing, or recycling components while striving to maintain quality and to return biological components to nature. This flow can be understood as a circular supply chain network, where goods and related services are reconfigured. Like all forms of inter-organizational exchange, circularity initiatives require purposeful governance structures to succeed. Extant research offers few insights regarding the design of governance structures that can contribute to the success of circularity initiatives in the automotive sector, however.

This project will be performed in collaboration with Volvo Group and will empirically investigate the circular supply chain structures, the main goals and challenges for different actors, and the formal and informal governance mechanisms used. A framework of combined insights from inter-organizational management control, supply chain management, and industrial marketing/purchasing will support this inquiry. The project will result in important insights regarding how governance structures for circularity initiative in automotive transport sector can be designed to align appropriation concerns and coordination costs, to align the goals of individual organizations and collective goals, and to align commercial goals with sustainability goals. The model resulting from the project may have substantial impact on the future research on governance of sustainability initiatives as well as on practice. The project will be performed in collaboration between three researchers representing different academic disciplines and will be carried out from 2025-2026. Based on this project, an application will be prepared to extend project findings to circularity initiatives in other organizations in the automotive transport industry and in other industries.