Beyond a Technocentric Transition: A Diverse Economies Perspective for Social Justice in Circular Economy Business Models
Abstract
The circular economy, dominated by capitalocentric, technocentric, and eco‐modernist discourses, risks perpetuating systemic injustice because of its limited consideration of the social and of what is possible. In this article, we examine how social justice can be embedded into circular business models (CBMs)—key drivers of the circular economy transition—within and beyond capitalist enterprises, traditionally the focus of CBM literature. Building on a systematic literature review of 55 articles and informed by a diverse economies framework, we constructed an inventory of interventions that can help firms uphold recognition, procedural, and distributive justice. Our analysis of these interventions, based on the extent to which they are embedded into business models (justice as an add‐on vs. justice as a design principle) and deviate from the dominant capitalist paradigm, reveals a typology of strategies that firms implicitly adopt to push just outcomes at the system level. This article also describes structural conditions that debunk the assumption that firm‐level justice interventions automatically translate to desirable system‐level outcomes (i.e., addressing systemic injustice). Analyzing CBMs through a combined diverse economies and social justice framework encourages us to recognize a greater diversity of economic and enterprise activity as legitimate, question the extent to which enterprises can achieve systemic change under a capitalist system, and (re)ignite a connection between micro and macrolevels of analysis called for in the strategic management literature.