Clarifying ”the social” in circular MedTech Business Models: implications for sustainability assessment

Other conference contribution, 2026

Circular value creation in the medical technology (MedTech) sector depends on multi-actor circular business models (CBMs) that must remain safe, compliant, economically viable, and scalable across geographies. However, the “social” dimension of sustainability in such BMs remains conceptually fragmented and methodologically under-specified, weakening both theory building and assessment practice (Isgren & Longo, 2024; Al Haj Eid et al., 2025). When “the social” is left ambiguous, scholars and practitioners select indicators that conflate distinct constructs (e.g., mechanisms, claims/benefits, and consequences). This reduces comparability and obscures which BM levers should be adjusted to improve sustainability outcomes. Social assessment frequently ends up in individual well-being measures (Heijungs et al., 2026). MedTech CBMs offer a good opportunity to explore the boundaries between individual and social domains.

The goal of this study is to bring conceptual clarity to what “social” means in the context of sustainable and circular business models, to delineate its different dimensions, and to specify the implications of these dimensions for sustainability assessment at the business model level. The core argument is that “social” is not a single construct and should be treated as a structured domain comprising analytically distinct but interrelated dimensions with different assessment implications, such as Social Impacts, Social Value, and Social Interactions.

The study conducts a structured literature synthesis and concept analysis to clarify how the “social” dimension is conceptualised and assessed in CE and CBM research. Using concept analysis, the study extracts definitions, boundary conditions, and the implied causal roles of social constructs, distinguishing whether they are framed as inputs/conditions, process mechanisms, value propositions/benefits, or outcomes/impacts. It then develops boundaries to prevent construct conflation (e.g., treating collaboration as an interaction mechanism rather than an impact; trust as a governance condition rather than verified value; and access as a value claim that must specify stakeholders and conditions). These clarified dimensions are mapped onto BMs' elements (actors, activities, governance, value propositions, value capture) to derive implications for assessment scope and indicator choice depending on whether the focus is social impacts, social value, or social interactions. Throughout, the MedTech circularity context is used as exemplification, because safety-critical constraints and cross-actor dependencies make it particularly visible how different conceptualisations of “social” lead to different assessment boundaries

The expected results are a conceptual framework relating Social Impacts, Social Value, and Social Interactions; a set of boundaries that can be used to design coherent assessment scopes and to avoid mixing mechanisms, claims, and outcomes in the same indicator set; and a set of assessment implications that articulate how each dimension changes what needs to be represented when assessing CBMs, including implications for integrating social and environmental assessment in socio-material terms. The contribution is conceptual and methodological. It provides a foundation for future empirical measurement by improving “what to measure” decisions, strengthening comparability across studies, and supporting practitioners and scholars in building assessment approaches that are aligned with decision and governance realities of CBMs, particularly in MedTech, where circularity requires robust partnerships and interaction mechanisms to operate safely and at scale.