Circular Economy in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises—Current Trends, Practical Challenges and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

The Circular Economy (CE) has evolved as a philosophy to transform industrial supply chains to become greener to combat climate change issues. Countries’ target of achieving Net Zero will never be fulfilled unless, along with larger organizations, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are decarbonized, as more than 90% of the world’s businesses are SMEs. Although, recently, there have been many studies on SMEs’ sustainability practices and performance covering drivers, bottlenecks, and opportunities, the holistic approach for embedding circular economy and sustainability covering design, planning, implementation, and operations is missing. This research bridges this knowledge gap by revealing trends and theories of circular economy adoption in SMEs. Additionally, this research derives the drivers/enablers, issues, and challenges and determines strategies, resources, and competencies for CE adoption in SMEs. This study concludes with a consolidated framework comprising factors and methods for CE implementation in SMEs. This entire piece of research has been undertaken using the secondary data analysis method through the content analysis of 188 published articles in highly ranked peer-reviewed journals.