Circular economy principles as a basis for a sustainability management theory: A systems thinking and moral imagination approach
基于循环经济原则，提出构建可持续管理理论的构想，通过系统思维和道德想象克服人与自然分离，为管理学者提供新框架。
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.