Employee skills for circular business model implementation: A taxonomy

• DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137027
• Publication Date: 2023-04-16T09:24:17Z
• Authors: Lucas Straub; Kris Hartley; Ivan Dyakonov; Harsh Gupta; Detlef van Vuuren; Julian Kirchherr
• Keywords: Circular economy; 9. Industry and infrastructure; Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment; 4. Education; Strategy and Management; Skills; SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth; Building and Construction; Capabilities; Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering; 12. Responsible consumption; Circular business models; Skill taxonomy; Sustainability; 8. Economic growth; SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy; SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production; General Environmental Science

A growing body of scholarship has examined circular business models as a pathway towards sustainability. However, employee skills to support such business models have been largely overlooked. Addressing this research gap, this article proposes a comprehensive skill taxonomy for start-ups embracing circular economy transition. As the first large-N effort to develop a comprehensive skill taxonomy for circular business model implementation, this study uses a clustering analysis of self-reported skill profiles for 2407 staff working in circular start-ups. The taxonomy outlines 40 skills across six categories: business innovation, operations, social dimensions, systems, digitization, and technical issues. Findings suggest that circular business model implementation requires a set of general, sustainable, and circular skills, but some of these skills have been neglected in scholarship. Promoting circular narratives as a framing device for skill development can help advance CE towards mainstream uptake, and this study's taxonomy offers a practical framework for using talent to accelerate CE transition.