Break the boundaries. Collaboration across disciplines and functions for circular economy: a comparative study of academic institution and corporation in Finland
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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Date
2020
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Mcode
Degree programme
Creative Sustainability
Language
en
Pages
74+8
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Abstract
Researchers have been considering interdisciplinary collaboration as a tool to solve socially-relevant complex problems. Besides, business practices have been using cross-functional collaboration to improve the capability of developing new products and services. In parallel, Circular Economy term is increasingly gaining attention among academia, industry, and policy agenda. The purpose of this study is to understand how individual organizations apply across disciplines collaboration in Circular Economy projects. This study is a part of the Aalto seed-funded project “Bridging circular economy technologies and business models”. The literature review gives an overview of existing studies on the topics of interdisciplinary collaboration, cross-functional collaboration, and Circular Economy. The synthesis of the literature review provides insights that there is a research gap between these individual topics, and this research aims to bridge that gap. The empirical data is gathered from primary and secondary sources and analysed in multiple case studies design. The within-case extensive analysis is illustrated and followed by the comparative cross-case analysis. The details and context of each case are presented in the empirical findings. This chapter serves to understand the drivers and motivations for organizations to practice interdisciplinary collaboration, the emergence of Circular Economy projects, the challenges that organizations are facing throughout the process, and what supporting factors for them to promote and facilitate these collaborations. In the discussion section, comparative cross-case analysis is conducted, presenting the similarities and differences between cases. In addition, the data collection and verification and how they bring new insights to the existing literature are discussed. However, the data do not have provide specific evidence on the linkage of interdisciplinary collaboration and the topic of Circular Economy despite the examined projects can be defined as Circular Economy projects. This is the main limitation of this study. Future research should therefore address this gap and contribute new perspectives into the emerging topic. The study results provide a number of emerging insights for management implications to initiate and sustain these collaborations. The key contribution of the study is the knowledge of specific organizations’ practices with this cross-disciplinary approach. Furthermore, another notable contribution to the existing literature is to build the bridge between separate research fields in the literature framework.Description
Thesis advisor
Halme, MinnaKeywords
interdisciplinary research, cross-functional collaboration, circular economy, teamwork