Service Design as a Sustainability Assessment Approach for Circular Business Models Case: Assessment of Finnish circular companies' business models from the service design perspective

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openAccess

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A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa

Date

2022-06-24

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Language

en

Pages

683-705

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Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on New Business Models: Sustainable Business Model Challenges: Economic Recovery and Digital Transformation

Abstract

Climate changes, overpopulation, resources overuse and ecological catastrophes require companies to embrace a circular economy and improve existing circular business models (CBMs). Due to their novelty, CBMs have been critiqued concerning their sustainability input at the company level. This paper contributes to the conference theme and session by assessing existing CBMs' sustainability using alternative sustainability assessment approach service design (SD) in three areas: innovation, which is crucial for sustainable business development enabling greater sustainability of CBMs; sustainable customer experiences on a human level allowing progressive organisational sustainability, and transparency in companies' internal and external processes indicating high sustainability processes area. A pilot study assessed 16 Finnish companies with four CBMs in seven industries to answer how sustainable are CBMs across different industries when adopting SD as a sustainability assessment approach? The author completed an assessment at the university SD educational process for professionals. It consisted of CBMs analysis adopting various design tools and a redesign conducted at the virtual workshop. Results revealed high sustainability performance in groundbreaking technological innovation (n=8) reinforced with innovative CBM (n=6) and limited sustainability performance in all other areas: limited customer-oriented services and poor user experiences (n=2), unfamiliarity with customer needs (n=9), haziness in the service life cycle (n=6), supply chain (n=4), value chain (n=5), and waste management (n=6). Therefore the short answer to RQ would be that pertinent CBMs are sustainable partly. Finally, the study demonstrates promising results when adopting SD as a sustainability assessment approach; however, the author recommends using other established procedures.

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Keywords

circular business models, service design, sustainability assessment, transparency, business innovation

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Citation

Sustar, H 2022, Service Design as a Sustainability Assessment Approach for Circular Business Models Case: Assessment of Finnish circular companies' business models from the service design perspective . in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on New Business Models: Sustainable Business Model Challenges: Economic Recovery and Digital Transformation . Liberà Università Maria SS. Assunta : LUMSA, pp. 683-705, International Conference on New Business Models, Rome, Italy, 23/06/2022 .