Tracking inter-firms’ relationships information in circular economy: the role of blockchain
Progetto Circular economy is widely recognised as a strategic approach for tackling
current sustainability challenges. Despite a lack of consensus on its
definition (Korhonen et al., 2018), it is commonly identified by practitioners
as a way to overcome the limitations of linear production and consumption
models for increasing resource use efficiency (Esmaeilian et al., 2020). This
led the scientific debate in delving into several issues ranging from supply
chain management to emissions and waste treatments. In this context, it is
worth to consider which drivers could support industry in implementing
circularity principles. Recent contributions suggest a number of potential
applications of enabling technologies for improving circular economy
principles under the Industry 4.0 framework (Lardo et al., 2020). Such an
approach enables real-time visualisation and actuation capabilities, which in
turn enable automated operations-level decision-making capability, and
many such new capabilities over the Industry 3.0 framework (Tiwari and
Khan, 2020). However, the proliferation of data generated by all those
expected capabilities require even new digital solutions to define how that
data should be captured, stored and managed for improving circular
economy accountability and analysis. Furthermore, this scenario involves a
high number of actors, making such effort even more challenging insofar
requiring a shift from organisational level to inter-organisation level. One of
the most interesting technologies that seem to overcome such challenge is
the blockchain, consisting in a shared ledger in which blocks of transactions
are authenticated and permanently recorded. Recent literature reviews (e.g.,
Valentinetti and Rea, 2022; Lardo et al., 2022; Valentinetti and Rea, 2021)
report a growing interest in the scientific community which considers the
blockchain as a disruptive innovation, including several benefits and
challenges for business and society.
This research project aims at investigating how blockchain could foster
industry information transparency in the implementation of circular
economy principles. Specifically, our focus is on the inter-firms’
relationships: since the blockchain tracks all transactions happening in
typically complex supply chains, an interesting issue is to investigate its role
in enhancing transparency related to transactions performed by multiple
entities, like suppliers, producers, vendors, distributors, etc. A transparent
and traceable product lifecycle can further close product lifecycle loops,
decrease waste generation, decrease emissions, and engage governments,
stakeholders, and users (Esmaeilian et al., 2020). Therefore, circular
economy experiences represent a stimulating industrial setting to delve into
the potential benefits stemming from some blockchain operational
principles, i.e., decentralisation, transparency and accountability