Cooperation, trust and transparency: the trident that can make or break the circular economy. A research into the incentives and conditions for interorganizational cooperation in a circular economy

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2017-09-26
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en
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The transition towards the circular economy brings several challenges, among other things, (governance) questions about how to organize the circular economy. Interorganizational cooperation is seen as the key for the development of the circular economy (Jonker et al., 2016). Although business-to-business collaboration is still not widespread, because of many legal, material, fiscal and financial barriers (Jonker et al., 2016). In general these barriers are identified, in contrast to the incentives and conditions for interorganizational cooperation, on which little information is known. Hence, this master’s thesis research is focused on the incentives that motivate companies to cooperate with each other towards the circular economy and the conditions that enable businesses to set up a long-term collaboration with each other in order to create circular business models. Theory about successful alliancing by Hunt et al. (2002) was used as a theoretical framework in order to identify the conditions for a successful cooperation. The results of this research show that there is a difference in the incentives for starting with circular economy between semi-governmental organizations and private companies. General incentives for cooperation are in short: obtaining greater learning benefits, sharing knowledge and inspire others, developing innovative products, and having a greater influence on suppliers as an alliance. The following conditions for interorganizational cooperation in a circular economy were identified by the interviewees: trust, transparency and shared goals.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen