Repairing the circular economy : institutional pressures, market configurations, and circular business model innovation

Abstract

Repair and product longevity are increasingly promoted as central mechanisms of the circular economy (CE), yet their expansion does not necessarily produce a singular pathway towards circularity. Repair may be organized through centralized, manufacturer-controlled service systems, competitive independent aftermarkets, or localized forms of DIY and community engagement, each distributing control, responsibility, and value differently. The dissertation investigates how institutional pressures surrounding repair and product longevity shape circular business model innovation, repair-market governance, and broader sustainability transitions. Its central argument is that regulatory, socio-cultural, and competitive pressures do not simply compel organizations and markets to converge towards a common model of circularity. Rather, their interaction produces heterogeneous organizational responses and competing configurations of repair. To explain this process, the dissertation develops the concept of institutional confluence, through which coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures are understood as interacting and mutually conditioning rather than as independent forces producing isomorphic convergence.

Across five publications, the dissertation develops a multilevel synthesis of these processes. At the macro level repair, longevity, and Right to Repair (R2R) are conceptualized as institutional pressures emerging through interacting regulatory, socio-cultural, and competitive pressures. At the meso-level, these pressures are translated through struggles over the organization and governance of repair markets. Drawing on market-shaping theory, the findings demonstrate that manufacturers, independent actors, policymakers, and grassroots organizations actively seek to construct preferred market arrangements. These activities produce competing configurations of manufacturer-controlled repair, independent market-led repair, and grassroots and consumer-led repair, with access to spare parts, information, capabilities, and collaboration becoming central sites of negotiation and control.

At the micro level, circular business model innovation is conditioned by these wider institutional and market configurations. Firms construct distinct strategic responses to product longevity and locate responsibility variously within the product, the user, the firm, or wider networks of actors. Repair-oriented business models consequently range from vertically integrated servitization and controlled lifecycle-extension strategies to more distributed forms of independent, collaborative, and community-based value creation. The dissertation thus contributes to circular business model research by demonstrating that repair-oriented business model innovation cannot be understood solely as a firm-level strategic choice, but is conditioned by the governance and institutional environments in which value creation occurs.

The dissertation further demonstrates that the organization of repair has consequences for sustainability transitions. Repair may reinforce efficiency-oriented and growth-compatible forms of circularity through centralized lifecycle management and resource optimization, or support more localized, participatory, and sufficiency-oriented transformations in production and consumption. It therefore challenges assumptions that repair is inherently progressive simply because it occupies a tighter circular loop. The dissertation contributes to institutional theory through institutional confluence, to market-shaping theory by explaining how actors construct and contest alternative repair-market configurations, and to circular business model research by demonstrating how institutional and market structures condition pathways for circular value creation.

Empirically, the dissertation is based primarily on the Danish and wider European consumer electronics context. Across the five publications, it combines semi-structured interviews and documentary material with abductive qualitative analysis, reflexive thematic analysis, computational text analysis, conceptual theory development, and an integrative literature review.