Stakeholder Relationships in the Circular Economy. Conceptualizing Relational Approaches Through Systematic Literature Review

C. Civera,S. Moggi,Valentina Chiaudano,Edward Freeman

Published 2025 in Business Strategy and the Environment

ABSTRACT

Circular economy (CE) demands a stakeholder perspective. However, CE literature investigating the nature and the evolution of stakeholder relationships for its effective implementation is not made explicit nor comprehensively conceptualized, resulting in a lack of appreciation for stakeholders' role and a poor understanding of how their relationships can facilitate CE. To advance a holistic overview in this regard, we conducted a systematic review of the literature on stakeholder relationships and CE. The in‐depth content analysis on 111 papers allowed us to conceptualize a novel matrix of four main stakeholder relational approaches at the firm–stakeholder and stakeholder–firm perspectives: Informative, Reciprocal, Advocative, and Ecosystemic—that can enhance and support CE initiatives. We detected osmotic boundaries and discussed dynamism among the four approaches, leading to a more nuanced understanding of stakeholder engagement in CE. The dynamism among stakeholder approaches constitutes a future research opportunity to be explored empirically and beyond CE.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2025

  • Venue

    Business Strategy and the Environment

  • Publication date

    2025-08-16

  • Fields of study

    Not labeled

  • Identifiers
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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CLAIMS

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REFERENCES

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