Digitally Mediated Circular Economy Practices in Ecosystems : A Human-Material Tuning Practice Perspective

Doctoral thesis, 2025

As the transition to a circular economy gains momentum, digital technologies — such as IoT, AI, automation, and 3D printing — are increasingly recognized as essential enablers of circular practices. Several studies demonstrate that these technologies support circular economy initiatives, such as facilitating multi-sided markets involving waste generators and buyers, or serving as intermediaries. Digital technologies provide economic incentives to increase the value of waste materials and reduce waste, especially when these materials can be traded through mobile platforms. Research also indicates that digital capabilities can help address challenges associated with implementing circular practices.

However, existing studies often present a deterministic view of digital technologies in circular economy practices. They tend to separate their digital capabilities from the human actions that enable circularity and from the practical, physical requirements of managing waste and used materials. Furthermore, research on how digitally mediated circular practices emerge remains limited. As a result, there is a lack of understanding of how digitally mediated practices are enacted in the transition to a circular economy.

This thesis contributes to filling this gap by drawing on Pickering’s concept of the “mangle of practice,” adopting a human-material perspective to explore how digitally mediated circular economy practices are enacted and how physical waste materials, digital technologies, and circular principles are integrated into the process. It is based on a comparative interpretive qualitative study of two cases of emerging circular ecosystems in Europe and Africa, both characterized by a practice void where no established circular practices initially existed.

This thesis advances the growing research on digital sustainability and the circular economy, with broader implications for the fields of Information Systems and Strategic Management. The key contributions are threefold. First, it enhances circular economy research through a conceptual model that presents a human-material tuning — or mangle of practice — perspective on circular economy studies. Second, it extends the work on human-material tuning within the information systems literature by applying it to the context of the circular economy, where circular principles guide actors. In doing so, it moves beyond a deterministic view of the role of digital technologies in enabling circular practices. The study opens the black box of activities behind the scenes, demonstrating how practices emerge as digital technologies, physical materials, and social actors become mutually entangled in practice. Third, it offers insights into strategic management ecosystem orchestration by showing that developing a circular economy at the ecosystem level should be understood not only as a social effort but also as a dynamic human-material tuning process. It shifts the focus from human agency alone to the importance of circular principles, such as resource stewardship and material agency.