The transition to a circular economy challenges existing regulatory frameworks, social norms, and belief systems: the dominant institutions. Moving from a linear to circular business model (CBM) is essential for sustainable business transformation. While CBMs have been widely studied in Europe, less is known about their emergence in the United States, where a national circular economy policy is still absent. This study explore...

The notion of circular economy (CE) has been trending among policymakers, businesses, and academia for over a decade. Sometimes poorly understood and often misrepresented as a one‐size‐fits‐all solution to environmental problems without economic trade‐offs, the concept has recently drawn considerable criticism. According to its critics, the CE (1) rebrands existing concepts without clarity, (2) makes unrealistic environmental...

The influence of environmental policy has been known to move beyond the country or regional contexts in which they have been implemented. Examples in literature include the “California effect” and the “Brussels effect”, showing how the policies adopted in the EU and California influence other jurisdictions. In this paper we study the following: To what extent are companies operating in the United States influenced by circular...

Circular economy has become an important goal for companies to address climate change and pressing resource issues. Yet, the process of circular business experimentation is highly uncertain. While the lean startup has been applied to the circular experimentation process, the concept of effectuation has only been used to a limited extent, despite its potential. We investigate the following question: To what extent can lean star...