The Impact of the Circular Economy Approach on the Project Portfolio and Selection Process

Abstract

The circular economy (CE) concept has reached increasing attention among practitioners and academia as a way to promote sustainability. The circular economy incorporates different features and contributions from various approaches that share the idea of closed loops. It focuses on improving effectiveness and efficiency and closing the energy and resource flows by changing the organization’s interpretation of products and economic value. The companies should redesign products to improve multiple life cycles, reuse, recycle, reduce, and recover materials in production or distribution and consumption processes. Since the project portfolio selection is a tool to reach the organizational strategy, there is a growing need to determine which criteria and characteristics of the circular economy approach to consider ensuring that suitable projects are selected. In selecting and managing the portfolio, the economic, social, and environmental sustainability requirements are suggested. The link between the circular economy’s characteristics and the selection criteria and the process is missing in the currently available sources. The author intended to determine whether a specific framework will bridge the knowledge gap between circularity conceptualizations and their application in the project portfolio management field and what such a framework should include. The arising question is as follows: Do the CE approach’s characteristics extend the criteria and factors considered in the project portfolio selection?