Bridging Economy and Ecology: a Circular Economy Approach to Sustainable Supply Chain Management

The linkage between economic and environmental issues in an inter-organizational context receives significant attention from scholars and industrial practice. Emerging concepts like Green Supply Chain Management (Green SCM), extending supply chain management with ecological aspects like resource optimization and recycling, might be the first step towards an ecologically responsible economy. But, the question for an appropriate solution for sustainable economic systems remains still open. This paper proposes the integration of the Circular Economy, an economic concept with a focus on long-term sustainability, with established concepts for inter-organizational systems. The proposed framework CESC integrates the Circular Economy model with SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference model) to establish a sustainable SCM model beyond Green SCM. The holistic approach is demonstrated by applying CESC to a selected Green SCM concept. CESC may be used to analyze inter-organizational systems on their long-term sustainability and as a blueprint for the development of sustainable, inter-organizational eco-systems.