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Waste generated from electrical and electronic equipment, collectively known as E-waste, remains a persistent environmental, economic and social problem. Sustainable E-waste management (EWM) has numerous benefits, such as preventing electronic waste from entering landfills, reducing the need for virgin materials by recovering valuable materials from recycling and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Circular economy (CE) practices are considered the initial steps toward sustainable EWM, but some hurdles have been reported in the adoption of these practices. Therefore, the current study aims to identify the common CE practices, sustainability of the EWM process and the challenges in EWM, and to develop a conceptual framework for effective EWM.

Very few studies have proposed frameworks that acknowledge the challenges and CE practices of EWM. To fill this gap, a systematic literature review (SLR) was performed, and 169 research articles were explored.

A total of seven challenges in the adoption of effective EWM were identified: rules and policy, infrastructure, consumer behaviour, informal sectors, community culture, technology and economy. Eight common CE practices were also found for effective EWM: reuse, recycle, remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair, reduce, recover and repurpose.

A conceptual framework guiding sustainable EWM was proposed, which includes solutions for the identified challenges, and CE practices with sustainable benefits.

Despite the well-recognized importance of recycled water, the study of industry-peer pressure on recycled water is relatively new. This study investigates how organizations experience and react to industry-peer pressure to set recycled water targets. Additionally, this study investigates the role of board chairs involved in sustainability committees in contributing to responses to industry-peer pressure.

Using Eviews 12, this study employed a pooled logistic regression model to analyze data from 1,346 firms on Taiwan and Taipei exchanges (2017–2020).

The findings revealed that frequency-based imitation drives recycled water target-setting diffusion. However, there is no direct relationship between outcome-based imitation and recycled water target-setting. Notably, outcome-based imitation drives the adoption of recycled water target-setting of firms with board-chair membership in sustainability committees.

This study faces certain data limitations. First, this study primarily focuses on water recycling. Future research could explore other ways to reduce water usage, such as using water-efficient equipment. Second, this study gathered information solely on the presence or absence of a board chairperson on the sustainability committee. Future researchers could explore the impact of the composition of sustainability committee on recycled water target-setting. Lastly, the sample used in this study is restricted to Taiwan's corporations that existed during 2017–2020. Future researchers may consider adopting a longitudinal design in other economies to address this limitation.

The findings of this study offer several guidelines and implications for recycled water target-setting and the composition of sustainability committees. It responds to an urgent call for solutions to water shortages when pressure from governments and nongovernmental organizations is relatively absent. The number of industry peers that have already set recycled water targets is indispensable for motivating firms to set their own recycled water targets. In terms of insufficient water-related regulatory pressure and normative pressure, this study found evidence suggesting that the direct motivation for setting recycled water targets stems from mimetic pressures via frequency-based imitation. The evidence in this study suggests that policymakers should require companies to disclose their peers’ recycled water target information, as doing so serves as an alternative means to achieving SDG 6.3.

Recycled water target-setting might be challenging. Water recycling practices may face strong resistance and require substantial additional resources (Zhang and Tang, 2019; Gao et al., 2019; Gu et al., 2023). Therefore, this study suggests that firms should ensure the mindfulness of board members in promoting the welfare of the natural environment when making recycled water target-setting decisions. To reap the second-mover advantage, firms must consider the conditions in which board members can more effectively play their role. Corporations may help their chairpersons in setting recycled water targets by recruiting them as members of sustainability committees. Meanwhile, chairpersons tend to activate accurate mental models when the water conservation performance of pioneering industry peers is strong enough to indicate the potential benefits of adopting recycled water target-setting. Investors’ and stakeholders’ understanding of how the composition of sustainability committees is related to recycled water target-setting may help to identify the potential drivers of firms’ water responsibility. Investors and stakeholders should distinguish firms in terms of the board chair’s membership of their sustainability committee and focus on water-use reduction outcomes in the industry. This study provides insights into circumstances whereby chairpersons help to restore the water ecosystem.

This study explains how frequency-based and outcome-based imitation are two prominent mechanisms underlying the industry-peer pressure concerning recycled water target-setting. Moreover, this study fills literature gaps related to the moderating roles of board-chair membership in sustainability committees concerning industry-peer pressure on recycled water target-setting.

Rapid innovation and developments in personal electronic technology have encouraged users to change users' devices more frequently than ever, which has resulted in creating a massive increase in the amount of electronic waste. The study focuses on identifying the barriers to closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) in the electronic industry.

A framework for analyzing the relationships among CLSC adoption barriers is designed. The authors adopted the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) technique to determine the critical barriers of electronic CLSC from the opinion of experts in the field.

The outcome from the analysis suggests that cost barriers, financial barrier, process barriers and supplier-side barriers are the main causal factors that prevent the adoption and implementation of e-waste CLSC. The causal relationship indicates that financial barrier is the most influential factor, while phycological barrier is the most flexible barrier to the adoption of e-waste CLSC.

This study is restricted to CLSC adoption barriers in the electronic industry by evaluating 36 sub-barriers grouped into 8 main dimensions related to different members of the supply chain.

Closed-loop adoption barriers have been proposed to understand the crucial barriers to implementation of CLSC in the electronic industry. The cause-and-effect relationship indicates the critical factors to be improved to increase adoption of e-waste CLSC, helping managers and regulatory bodies to mitigate the problem areas.

This study contributes to the literature on CLSC by adopting a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique which captures the critical barriers of e-waste CLSC adoption in Indian scenario.

The research objective starts from the argument that small-scale multinational corporations’ (SMNCs’) managerial behavior toward auditing decisions is influenced by their personal value, especially when the auditing process is not mandatory. This study aims to examine how national culture-religiosity affects that decision. The authors further examine how foreign-owned MNCs might behave differently from local MNCs, although the host country’s cultural-religiosity value might influence that decision.

This study obtains the data from three sources: Hofstede Framework, Pew Research Center and World Bank Enterprise Survey in cross-sectional mode. The final sample consists of 8,590 SMNCs from 45 countries as the observations. This study uses robust regression analysis to test the effects of culture, religiosity and controlling shareholders on the audited financial statements decision.

The regression results support the hypothesis, whereas cultural-religiosity values are associated with the audited financial report. The findings confirm stakeholder theory and institutional theory.

This study fills a gap in the literature by providing empirical evidence on the cultural and religiosity effects on the accounting decision of SMNCs. The results can be used as the foundation for future research related to MNCs’ managerial behavior toward accounting policies, especially with the psychosocial factors.

The main aim of this study is to understand the role of smart technologies and show the rankings of various smart technologies in collection and classification of electronic waste (e-waste).

This study presents a framework integrating the concepts of collection and classification mechanisms and smart technologies. The criteria set includes three main, which are economic, social and environmental criteria, including a total of 15 subcriteria. Smart technologies identified in this study were robotics, multiagent systems, autonomous tools, smart vehicles, data-driven technologies, Internet of things (IOT), cloud computing and big data analytics. The weights of all criteria were found using fuzzy analytic network process (ANP), and the scores of smart technologies which were useful for collection and classification of e-waste were calculated using fuzzy VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR).

The most important criterion was found as collection cost, followed by pollution prevention and control, storage/holding cost and greenhouse gas emissions in collection and classification of e-waste. Autonomous tools were found as the best smart technology for collection and classification of e-waste, followed by robotics and smart vehicles.

The originality of the study is to propose a framework, which integrates the collection and classification of e-waste and smart technologies.

The circular economy (CE) represents an industry-wide transition from linear to circular processes. There has been a proliferation of literature on CE in the last decade. However, the existing studies on the adaption of CE in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are scarce. This study aims to develop a research agenda and the way forward for future researchers focusing on the adoption of CE.

This article analyses the CE concepts through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR). Coding and content analysis are performed to generate emergent themes with the help of “Atlas.ti” software.

The authors uncovered the contemporary significance of adopting CE and the state-of-the-art literature on CE. The study's findings fall into four broad themes: Technical know-how, resource and process optimization, reverse practices and technology and innovation. Ten thought-provoking questions were identified in the four themes that researchers can explore further in embracing CE to achieve sustainability in SMEs.

The study has highlighted the importance of CE adoption and CE's benefits to stakeholders across all three dimensions, i.e. social, economic and ecological. Practitioners can use the agenda in four themes to strengthen the practitioners' existing practices in SMEs to promote CE.

The study's uniqueness is the supply of current knowledge from diverse literature and practical consequences for SMEs. This study opens new lines of inquiry to adopt CE in SMEs, streamlining the existing literature into four themes to focus future research.

This study aims to investigate whether the increasing robot adoption will affect employment rate and wages to contribute to the economic cycle and sustainable development in the world.

The authors introduce a two-way fixed effect model and ordinary least-squares (OLS) model to evaluate the influence based on relevant data of the eighteen countries with the largest robot stocks and robot densities in the world from 2006 to 2019 to test the influences and do the robustness test and endogeneity test by using empirical models.

The authors’ research findings suggest that increasing robot adoption can cause strong negative impacts on employment for both males and females in these economies. Second, the effect of robots on reducing job opportunities has penetrated different industries. It means that this negative impact of robots is comprehensive for the industry. Third, robot adoption can have a strong positive influence on wages and increase workers' incomes.

The limitations of the study are that the influence of industrial intelligence technologies on the circular economy is diversities in different countries. Thus, this study should consider the development levels of different economies to do additional confirmatory studies.

This study makes out the correlations between industrial robots and the employment market from the circular economy perspective. The result proves the existence of this influence relationship, and the authors propose some suggestions to promote sustainable economic development.

This paper addresses the activity of industrial intelligence technologies in the labor market. The employment market is an important part of the circular economy, and it will benefit social development if the government provides appropriate guidance for social investment and industrial layout.

This study is one of the few studies which considered the impact of industrial robots on employment and wages from the perspective of different industries, and this is very important for the circular economy in the world. The results of this paper provide an instructive reference for government policymakers and other countries to stabilize the labor market and optimize human resources for sustainable economic development.

This study aims to examine the blockchain landscape in supply chain management by drawing insights from academic and industry literature. It identifies the key drivers, categorizes the products involved and highlights the business values achieved by early adopters of blockchain technology within the supply chain domain. Additionally, it explores fingerprinting techniques to establish a robust connection between physical products and the blockchain ledger.

The authors combined the interpretive sensemaking systematic literature review to offer insights into how organizations interpreted their business challenges and adopted blockchain technology in their specific supply chain context; content analysis (using Leximancer automated text mining software) for concept mapping visualization, facilitating the identification of key themes, trends and relationships, and qualitative thematic analysis (NVivo) for data organization, coding and enhancing the depth and efficiency of analysis.

The findings highlight the transformative potential of blockchain technology and offer valuable insights into its implementation in optimizing supply chain operations. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of product provenance information to consumers, with blockchain technology offering certainty and increasing customer loyalty toward brands that prioritize transparency.

This research has several limitations that should be acknowledged. First, there is a possibility that some relevant investigations may have been missed or omitted, which could impact the findings. In addition, the limited availability of literature on blockchain adoption in supply chains may restrict the scope of the conclusions. The evolving nature of blockchain adoption in supply chains also poses a limitation. As the technology is in its infancy, the authors expect that a rapidly emerging body of literature will provide more extensive evidence-based general conclusions in the future. Another limitation is the lack of information contrasting academic and industry research, which could have provided more balanced insights into the technology’s advancement. The authors attributed this limitation to the narrow collaborations between academia and industry in the field of blockchain for supply chain management.

Practitioners recognize the potential of blockchain in addressing industry-specific challenges, such as ensuring transparency and data provenance. Understanding the benefits achieved by early adopters can serve as a starting point for companies considering blockchain adoption. Blockchain technology can verify product origin, enable truthful certifications and comply with established standards, reinforcing trust among stakeholders and customers. Thus, implementing blockchain solutions can enhance brand reputation and consumer confidence by ensuring product authenticity and quality. Based on the results, companies can align their strategies and initiatives with their needs and expectations.

In essence, the integration of blockchain technology within supply chain provenance initiatives not only influences economic aspects but also brings substantial social impacts by reinforcing consumer trust, encouraging sustainable and ethical practices, combating product counterfeiting, empowering stakeholders and contributing to a more responsible, transparent and progressive socioeconomic environment.

This study consolidates current knowledge on blockchain’s capacity and identifies the specific drivers and business values associated with early blockchain adoption in supply chain provenance. Furthermore, it underscores the critical role of product fingerprinting techniques in supporting blockchain for supply chain provenance, facilitating more robust and efficient supply chain operations.

The primary aim of this study is to examine the decision-making process of a reverse supply chain within a cooperative-competitive environment, with a particular emphasis on the incorporation of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in the recycling process.

The impact of IoT on recycling effectiveness, RF (refurbished) product demand and remanufacturing expenses is analyzed. The game-theoretic models are constructed to incorporate the co-competitive relationship between a IR (Internet Recycler) and a remanufacturer, with specific attention paid to the IR's application of IoT technology.

The results indicate that the use of IoT reduces the costs associated with remanufacturing, leading to an increase in the transfer price of pre-owned items procured from IRs. The efficacy of the reverse supply chain depends not only on its cost-saving capabilities but also on consumer preferences toward RF and remanufactured (RM) items.

IoT technology can benefit Internet recycling and remanufacturing by enhancing transparency, quality monitoring and automation of processes. It can also help reduce operating costs, improve customer engagement and incentivize cooperation between organizations.

This study examined the strategic decision-making processes in the context of cooperation and competition between IR and remanufacturers. In addition, this research makes a valuable contribution to the literature by elucidating the optimal conditions for the effective implementation of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in recycling operations.

The study aims to develop and test a supply chain wide green product development framework of focal firms and their major suppliers, in the context of the Chinese automotive industry.

An in-depth case studies approach is adopted for this study. Three automotive sector upstream supply chains involving 17 firms and 51 experts as respondents were interviewed on the importance and implementation effectiveness of 6Rs (reduce, redesign, recover, remanufacture, reuse and recycle) across the manufacturer and their respective tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers.

The results indicate that the Chinese automotive sector supply chains are mainly focused on “reduce” practices with immediate environmental and economic benefits. The investigated firms however had future implementation plans for “redesign” and “recovery” practices to become comprehensive in green product development (GPD).

The study facilitates automotive firms, industry policymakers and researchers the understanding of incorporating comprehensive GSCM practices across the upstream supply chain to achieve circularity. The study focused on upstream supply chain due to the concentration of major production practices in this section of the supply chain. However, the downstream supply chain equally deserve attention as well as the need to understand the mediating and moderating roles of the different Rs to tease out the pros and cons of achieving overall environmental sustainability.

There are very limited studies on comprehensive GPD for achieving optimal GSCM and sustainability. By simultaneous looking at a focal firm and its upstream supply chains GSCM practices, this study addresses a system-wide comprehensive GPD issues from implementation of 6Rs perspectives in the supply chain.