The linear paradigm of take-make-dispose in production and consumption patterns impedes the achievement of global sustainability goals. Strategies for maintaining the added value of resources and circulating them have been discussed as promising for the future. There are, however, many barriers to be addressed to overcome the linear lock-in. The large body of literature on these barriers is notably diverse in terms of theory, methods, sectors, products, and settings. This demonstrates the complexity of delineating implications to the practice and research needs. Without a common framework to analyse barriers, knowledge does not accumulate, hindering the development and implementation of solutions and policies that could effectively address the barriers. In this article, we developed a systematic map of studies on barriers related to the circular transition. The purpose was twofold: (1) to classify published research on barriers; (2) to provide a searchable database for future more rigorous systematic literature reviews. We reviewed the abstract of 527 publications and classified the study according to a developed scheme. This classification scheme includes the research paradigms (circular economy, sharing economy, collaborative consumption and product-service systems), circular strategy (recycling, remanufacturing, component/product reuse, and access-based consumption), country, sector/industry/product, and research approach and method. The resulting research map is open source, serving also as an adaptive digital database for researchers alike to perform systematic reviews and contribute further to its collaborative development

Barriers to access-based consumption (ABC) have been extensively studied in different strands of literature. However, cumulative knowledge is not organized to date, and a comprehensive overview of barriers identified by empirical studies in diverse strands is lacking. Such a picture is essential for laying the ground for further change-oriented research and actual changes in practice. This article reports on the results of a systematic review on barriers to transitioning from ownership- to access-based consumption. The review focuses on the literature strands product-service systems, circular economy, sharing economy, and collaborative consumption. Through open and axial coding of 289 barriers reported in 45 empirical studies, we found 17 themes of barriers concerning consumers, business, and society. The analysis of the barriers reveals four significant insights important for the research and practitioner community:

1. the overall experience of ABC and trust mechanisms need to be better understood;
2. organizational aspects in traditional business need a system change;
3. regulation plays a fundamental role in making ABC work for business, society, and sustainability; and
4. sharing risks and experimentation for new learnings are necessary.

These four major insights suggest that consumers need business and government to offer enabling conditions for ABC – spanning from raising awareness and understanding to improving user experience. Furthermore, businesses need governments to create the necessary structures to support ABC offerings – from decreasing risks to increasing incentives. How and which mechanisms can further facilitate circular behaviors is a salient topic for future investigations.

Circular economy (CE) is gaining interest among industrial firms in light of sustainability concerns, and several incumbent firms are integrating it into their strategy. In this study, we scrutinize learnings from three large established industrial firms with a clear CE agenda and that are front‐runners in CE strategy deployment. We analyze exploitation and exploration approaches to CE and problematize how these approaches relate to radical innovation, which we argue is critical for achieving CE. Semi‐structured interviews ( n  = 30) were used to collect data. We found several issues referring to (1) challenges and approaches to normative management, (2) how the innovation ecosystem is engaged, (3) how goals and metrics relate to CE, and (4) resources and coordination regarding the CE initiative. Overall, current exploitative approaches are favored over explorative, mirroring an undesired imbalance between the two. We suggest several ways to counteract this. For example, (1) addressing existing norms so that they align with the ambitions in CE, (2) actively managing collaboration in the innovation ecosystem, including radically new setups of different actors, and (3) that managers need to carefully consider when and how to use goals and measurements in a circular strategy deployment, to foster both radical and incremental innovation.

While several existing firms have begun making changes to meet a circular economy transition, it is clear that they meet with several managerial challenges. Management control systems can help managers make the radical changes and facilitate the innovation processes that is required to meet circular economy. However, little is known about how management controls are applied in the context of a circular economy transformation, and whether traditional management controls are compatible with a circular logic. This paper aims to provide detailed and empirically based insight on these issues.

This study examined three large industrial incumbent firms to see how they utilize action-, result-, and cultural controls to implement circular economy principles, and what tensions they have experienced. We used semi-structured interviews (n=38) to collect data, and thematic analysis for the analysis.

The analysis suggests that while circular economy principles are not integrated in all parts of the management control system, there are still several factors that can both enable and impede a circular transformation. Furthermore, imbalances and inconsistencies were found concerning different types of managerial controls used. Alarmingly, circular economy initiatives are at risk of being reduced to minor incremental improvements if the radical changes needed are not better understood, and changes made to the management control system to facilitate these.

This research provides rich qualitative insights bridging the new phenomenon of circular economy adoption in incumbent firms with research on innovation management and management controls.