Companies’ future visions for circularity: A frame analysis based on Finnish front-runner CE companies

Abstract

Despite increasing calls for circularity in business, the trending Circular Economy (CE) is not converting into action and the global usage of secondary material is declining. Addressing this gap is vital for our future well-being. Hence, more research is needed on whether and how companies translate broader CE discourses into their future visions. This study employed frame analysis to investigate how the CE’s meaning and goals are being envisioned and shaped in companies’ external communication to advance their future goals. Drawing empirical insights from documents focused on 41 Finnish self-declared front-runner CE companies from various industries, the paper contributes to current CE literature in two ways. First, five distinct future vision frames were identified – technological utopia, outsourcing circularity, business-as-usual, market leader, and systemic change – that demonstrate how self-described front-runner companies communicated circularity to their stakeholders. Second, the study demonstrates how company-level future visions align with or differ from macro-level CE visions. The study found that even self-described frontrunner CE companies were reluctant to align with strong sustainability in their framing, limiting the transformative potential of CE in business context. The findings have implications for managers regarding how they can assess their future visions from the perspective of weak or strong sustainability.