Circular economy principles as a basis for a sustainability management theory: A systems thinking and moral imagination approach

De Angelis, Roberta ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8324-454X and Ianulardo, Giancarlo 2024. Circular economy principles as a basis for a sustainability management theory: A systems thinking and moral imagination approach. Business Strategy and the Environment 33 (5) , pp. 4861-4870. 10.1002/bse.3730

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Abstract

To enable corporations to bring about more responsible business practices, changes in the wider system within which businesses operate – including the mental models through which sustainability is understood in the management field – are necessary. Drawing on functioning principles in natural ecosystems – as embodied in circular economy thinking – this conceptual article proposes some constructs to inform the development of a sustainability management theory. We show that the potential for the circular economy to provide a sounder basis to sustainable management theory rests on its capacity to propose a socio‐eco‐systemic framework, which overcomes the separation between man and nature and is isomorphic to the conception proposed by the emerging complexity paradigm. Also, we show that, by imagining a new cognitive framework and evaluating the current linear model and the alternative circular model from a moral standpoint, the circular economy can be thought of as an exercise in moral imagination.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0964-4733
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	7 March 2024
Date of Acceptance:	13 February 2024
Last Modified:	23 Jul 2024 13:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/166951

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