Business networks in circular supply chains: Understanding interactions, tensions, and collaborations

Licentiatavhandling, 2025

Circular supply chains (CSCs) involve diverse patterns of collaboration and experience tensions that differ from those in traditional linear supply chains. Considering that the nature of circularity is preserving the value of products and materials over the long run, the collaboration and interaction of the firms in their business network change. This change is not just an extension of the linear supply chains but represent new characteristics that require closer attention, since circularity emerges through the business networks in CSCs. Firms do not achieve circularity in isolation; it is developed through interaction in networks where various actors with diverse roles and interests contribute to and negotiate the direction of change.

This thesis aims to explore how business networks contribute to the transition towards CSCs, with the role of interaction, collaboration, and tensions in focus. As more firms shift away from linear to circular approaches, they also encounter not only technical and operational tensions but also a multitude of other tensions, such as relational tensions that unfold over time, between organizations, and in the larger networks.

The thesis builds on the combined findings of two papers, both of which examine how business networks are involved in the development of CSCs. Both of the studies in the two papers are focused on organizing circularity at the firm, dyadic, and network levels, revealing the complexity of transition into a CSC. The thesis considers the evolution of CSCs as a dynamic process where the firms and other actors often face tensions and need collaboration to adapt over time to make circular solutions possible. These tensions can be productive, and pressure points develop into opportunities. They also open up space for conversation and rethink the routines of actors, and test new forms of collaboration within the network, which can help CSCs develop and improve.

By addressing the three research questions, the thesis contributes theoretically by elaborating the networked nature of CSCs, offering a processual multi-level perspective, identifying key tensions and related collaboration strategies, and adopting a business network and a processual perspective drawing on the industrial network approach.