The concept of circular economy has been gaining momentum in the last years among scholars, practitioners and policymakers, and it is being recognised as a way to transition to a more balanced development. Despite this growing interest and its potential, its implementation in practice is still understudied. The present study aims to fill this research gap by analysing the implementation of circular economy in the private sector through different lenses. We look at different existing frameworks coming from different sources (the academic literature, the practitioner’s literature, and public policy strategies at the EU and national level) that aim to identify and describe various circular economy initiatives and we use them to analyse a sample of 64 companies considered frontrunners of circular economy implementation by the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, a leading institution on this area.
We expect to identify how each framework is able to represent the circular initiatives implemented by the companies sampled, and the main similarities and differences among them. We will also determine the main strengths and advantages of using each framework, contributing to the debate on circular business models’ classification.
