Abstract
For the transition towards a circular economy (CE), organisations have to be prepared to adapt to major changes. Thus, the concept and implementation of change management (CM) will be essential to an organisation’s success during this transformative period. Studies have shown that organisational CE barriers were more significant than individual CE barriers. To overcome such obstacles, the most appropriate set of managerial practices should be carefully considered. These barriers also have the potential to influence the agricultural sector, which seeks to adopt more sustainable ways of production. The goal of this paper is to propose a solution framework based on CM strategies to overcome organisational challenges posed by a CE, especially for agribusinesses. To accomplish this objectively, a systematic literature review and a content analysis were conducted. The common errors in CM within the implementation process and the main CE barriers were identified and classified. An in-depth analysis of the issue’s roots led to a solid understanding of how to tackle such CM problems. This paper presents an overview of organisational CE barriers verified in the agricultural context, the common errors in CM, and the correlation between these findings. The two areas were then combined in a matrix that shows the connection between common errors in CM errors and CE barriers. Based on this result, a solution framework called 3CE2CE was developed that provides a step-by-step guide on how organisations can successfully undergo transformation processes towards a CE with the principles of CM.
Highlights
Economic incentives have been and will be the key drivers for change [1], with the circular economy (CE) being increasingly debated as one of the promising concepts by scientists, policymakers, and industries to decouple economic growth from natural resource depletion and environmental degradation and, by doing so, to reconcile economic interests with the integrity of the environment [2, 3]
The goal of this paper is to propose a solution framework based on change management (CM) strategies to overcome organisational challenges posed by a CE, especially for agribusinesses
This paper presents an overview of organisational CE barriers verified in the agricultural context, the common errors in CM, and the correlation between these findings
Summary
Economic incentives have been and will be the key drivers for change [1], with the circular economy (CE) being increasingly debated as one of the promising concepts by scientists, policymakers, and industries to decouple economic growth from natural resource depletion and environmental degradation and, by doing so, to reconcile economic interests with the integrity of the environment [2, 3]. The concept and implementation of change management (CM), which is ‘the process of continually renewing an organisation’s direction, structure, and capabilities’ [5], will be essential to survive in this transformative period of time. Due to the large scope of the transformation, the transition towards a CE requires a ‘larger portion of change management than previous developments’ [1]. In this context, rapid changes and continuous improvement of different aspects of the work are required, which forces changes in people’s way of thinking and, with that, resistance to those changes might emerge [6]. Unlike some other innovative systems, CE needs to become competitive to an already existing, functioning linear infrastructure, for which managing the upcoming changes becomes even more important
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