Supply decisions for circular business models: What are they, and why do they matter?
本研究通过定性探索，以服装图书馆为例，构建了循环商业模式的供应决策框架，识别出供应商、产品、材料和供应渠道四个层面的关键决策及标准，对采购与供应管理领域有重要贡献。
Purchasing and supply decisions face new challenges due to resource scarcity and the urgent need for solutions. While circular business models—which focus on closing, slowing, narrowing, and intensifying resource loops to keep resources in use longer, minimize waste, maximize value, and reduce virgin material consumption—offer essential solutions, little is currently known about supply decisions within such models. This qualitative exploratory study investigates supply decisions and their associated criteria for circular business models. We focus on clothing libraries, a novel circular business model where members borrow curated garments. Drawing on insights from six clothing libraries and 10 suppliers, we developed a framework for supply decisions for circular business models. This framework shows four selection decisions as key decisions for circular business models: 1) supplier, 2) product, 3) material, and 4) supply channel. The results also distinguish between criteria for the upstream and downstream aspects of the supply chain. This highlights the importance of understanding the entire lifecycle of products and materials. While our study identifies a wide range of criteria for supply decisions for circular business models, it does not propose a fixed order for their consideration. Instead, these decisions rely on multiple sets of criteria across different levels (supplier, product, material, channel). The sequence and weighting of these criteria vary, depending on expert knowledge applied case-by-case. This approach allows supply decisions to effectively support circular business models in facilitating more sustainable resource use. As a contribution to purchasing and supply management, our study elaborates on circular sourcing and supplier selection by expanding the scope of circularity criteria and deepening the understanding of individual criteria, but also challenging the conventional approach of identifying and weighting criteria. • Presents a framework for supply decisions for circular business models. • Identifies decisions at four levels: supplier, product, material, supply channel. • Extends the supply decision criteria for circularity. • Distinguish between upstream and downstream supply chain criteria.