SCArCITY - Scaling Circular Business Models in Cascaded Systems: Paradoxes, Strategies and Metrics in Clothing and Textile Industry

Textile and clothing industry has gained attention for establishing circular business models recently.

While the clothing sector, including second-hand, involves recycling and resale of clothes, the recent COVID-19 has in addition emphasized circularity in textile PPE sector.

However, the current state of adoption is slow, and considerable sustainability impact can be achieved only by scaling-up these circular business models, which further demands more cascaded ways of operation.

In addition, when operating different circular business models, e.g. recycling, resale, certain conflicts emerge in terms of goals, design and resource needs, giving rise to several organizational paradoxes/tensions which in turn hinder scaling.

The purpose is to explore these strategic paradoxes in, and capabilities required for, integrating circular business models in cascaded textile and clothing systems, and propose relevant metrics to evaluate their performance.

Grounded in the roots of paradox-, dynamic capabilities- and cascade chain theories, the project focus on scaling circular businesses in cascaded textile systems by finding the main organizational tensions, capabilities and business model innovation to overcome these, and key performance metrics for measuring effectiveness.

Three specific studies - Delphi, case studies, and conceptual study, are respectively conducted from clothing, used clothing and textile PPE sectors, and the results are connected to Sustainable Development Goals.