Digital Transformation of Business Model Innovation and Circular Economy

Dear Colleagues,

A significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was the global acceleration of digital transformation across all types of organisations. Digital transformation risked (and continues to risk) becoming a buzzword for the organisational changes that need to be undertaken to survive and persist as an organisation rather than more strategic or even visionary shifts in activity.

These generally operational changes were motivated by entirely economic needs and represented the substitution of existing practice with a digital equivalent. One familiar example in the UK and elsewhere was the shift by small retail businesses to become almost entirely cashless with the adoption of contactless payment devices. As a result, what was described as digital transformation in the popular imagination as well as what digital transformation is—the process of holistic organisational digitalisation—were both increasingly becoming separated from wider social and environmental concerns expressed through the triple bottom line. This change was made for organisational survival, irrespective of the sustainability of the new practices.

The concept of digital transformation needs to be reoccupied to place holistic organisational digitalisation within an intentionally wider systemic backdrop. Business models must be sensitive to their wider social and environmental consequences and the impacts that they produce up and down the supply chain.

We are seeking papers that document the intersection of sustainable business practices with the holistic digitalisation of an organisation. This combination will inevitably be represented by descriptions of new, innovative and entrepreneurial organisations. The founders and the workers in these organisations may be young, 'left-field', and unexpected. We are also seeking papers that document the progress being made to see this intersection occur in more established organisations of any size. Enabling sustainability or circularity requires changes in the way companies generate value and understand and do business. Debates regarding the nature, meaning, and purpose of the concept of value within sustainable digital transformation presents a range of directions of research for contributors to pursue.

Discussions of models that utilise a circular economy approach, social entrepreneurship, and organisations that embed sustainable CSR practice within their everyday operations are also welcome. Critical views regarding the relationship between sustainability and new models of business may also consider that "not all systems (e.g., businesses, value chains) incorporating circular principles are intrinsically more sustainable" (Geissdoerfer et al., 2018b). This opens up the opportunity for wider debates such as those conveyed in the observation that "companies are compelled to interact within an ecosystem of actors, moving from a firm-centric to a network-centric operational logic. This transition requires rethinking their incumbent business models (BM), in order to enable a decoupling of value creation and resource consumption" (Bocken et al., 2016).

More theoretically oriented papers that document elements for consideration that enable the negotiation of sustainable digital transformation are welcome, as are papers that discuss the barriers to this type of transformation occurring.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Gordon Fletcher
Dr. Marie Griffiths
Guest Editors

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• business models
• innovation
• circular economy
• digitalisation
• corporate social responsibility
• social entrepreneurship
• sustainable models
• balanced economic development
• triple bottom line