From Circular Economy Disclosure to Circular Transformation: A Case Study From Food‐Producing Companies
基于欧洲大型食品生产企业的可持续性报告，分析其循环经济披露内容，发现多数企业仅报告生产流程转型，少数企业提供商业模式循环转型的实质信息，强调系统思维和全价值链视角对推动商业模式循环转型的重要性。
ABSTRACT Changing the use of resources and the treatment of waste is an important driver towards sustainable development. While this includes transformation of production processes, it also requires the transition of complete business models towards more circularity. Assessing and understanding drivers towards such transformations of business models are the focus of this paper. Therefore, a grounded theory–based content analysis is performed centring around the reporting requirements in European Sustainability Reporting Standard E5 on circular economy and resource use. Following the theory of targeted transparency, sustainability disclosures of large European food‐producing companies are analysed to infer information on their way towards a circular transformation of business models. The findings show that firms report on circular economy, but that most disclosures inform stakeholders on the transformation of production processes. Only some firms provide substantial information on the circular transformation of their business models. The findings suggest that circular economy requires a systems thinking perspective that considers the whole value chain to induce effective transitions of business models towards circularity. Future research should aim at supporting firms in their transition and identify barriers to reduce.