Conceptualising Collaborations beyond Industrial Boundaries: A Literature Review and a Theoretical Proposition to Understand Cross-Industrial Collaborations in the Circular Supply Network

Abstract

This state-of-the-art review paper aims to provide an overview of the current research in supply chain and management on cross-industrial collaborations. It also formulates a theoretical proposition to study them. This research on cross-industrial collaborations is carried out in the more specific context of the circular economy, as the scale-up of this economic model has the particularity of requiring collaborations between organisations from different industrial sectors, a subject that remains to date relatively unexplored. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part is a literature review. A presentation on current knowledge on supply-chain collaborations for the circular economy is realised, followed by a literature gap exploration of cross-industrial collaborations. The second part is a theoretical proposition. Concepts of the network theory and of the inter-organisational proximity framework and their relevance are explained, followed by a proposition of a combination of the two views to conceptualise cross-industrial collaborations. The objective of this concept paper is to provide a thematic and theoretical background for future studies to understand how to connect non-traditional actors within a supply network, how companies from different industries manage to collaborate, and to assess the opportunities and pitfalls of these collaborations for the scale-up of the circular economy.