A Strategy Cycle Nexus for Circular Economy and Industry 4.0 Integration: A Global Expert Perspective
基于20位全球学者和实践者的访谈，研究了循环经济与工业4.0融合的实际实施，识别出政策治理、组织、技术、社会伦理四个战略主题，并提出了战略周期关联框架，为管理者和政策制定者提供指导。
ABSTRACT The adoption of circular economy (CE) practices supported by Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies remains limited, despite their strong potential to enhance sustainable performance (SP). Organizations continue to face practical challenges in identifying effective strategies, enabling technologies, and implementation conditions. Drawing on 20 semistructured interviews with scholars and practitioners engaged in CE initiatives and I4.0 adoption across diverse sectors globally, this research examines how CE –I4.0 integration is implemented in practice. The findings identify four interrelated strategic themes shaping CE –I4.0 integration: policy and governance, organizational, technological, and social and ethical. These themes capture how regulatory frameworks, organizational practices, digital capabilities, and social considerations collectively influence the implementation of CE –I4.0 initiatives. Within and across these themes, strategies interact dynamically with enabling opportunities and implementation challenges, forming a continuous strategy cycle in which policy frameworks shape organizational practices, guide technological adoption, support social and ethical outcomes, and are refined through feedback from implementation. By conceptualizing CE –I4.0 integration as a dynamic and interaction‐driven process, this study advances research on sustainability strategies. It also proposes a strategy cycle nexus framework that provides actionable guidance for managers and policymakers seeking to design and implement effective, digitally enabled CE transitions.