Opportunities for disruptive digital technologies to ensure circularity in supply Chain: A critical review of drivers, barriers and challenges

Abstract

The circular economy (CE) concept has gained significant attention to deal with the sustainability challenges in supply chain (SC). CE practices offers innovative approaches to optimize various SC processes leading to sustainable growth. However, adoption of CE practices faces many roadblocks where application of disruptive digital technologies can be a game changer. The extant literature lacks the investigation on drivers, enablers, critical barriers, and challenges in adopting disruptive digital technologies along with CE practices in SC. To fill this lacuna, an in-depth state-of-the-art of review of 187 articles has been conducted which resulted in the identification of 49 drivers and enablers, and 25 barriers and challenges. Furthermore, a framework has been proposed to elucidate the connection between disruptive digital technologies and CE performance in SC. Our review reveals that digital technology enabled CE practices helps to improve several performance metrics like resource optimization, waste reduction, product life cycle, occupational health, social performance, product safety and quality, and customer loyalty and satisfaction. The proposed framework will help industry practitioners, researchers, and policy makers in devising strategies for adopting disruptive digital technologies enabled CE practices in SC to achieve sustainability.