Employee skills for circular business model implementation: A taxonomy

作者：Straub, Lucas^*; Hartley, Kris; Dyakonov, Ivan; Gupta, Harsh; van Vuuren, Detlef; Kirchherr, Julian

来源：JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION, 2023, 410: 137027.

DOI：10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137027

• Circular economy
• Circular business models
• Sustainability
• Capabilities
• Skills
• Skill taxonomy

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 imple-mentation 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.