Building bridges to overcome organisational distance in the supply network

Thesis Defence
Building bridges to overcome organisational distance in the supply network: an exploratory study of exchanges opening industrial boundaries and their facilitation for a circular economy

Anne Ratsimandresy, PhD candidate in the Paris Doctoral programme, publicly defended her thesis in Management Sciences.

6 December 2023
ESCP Business School Paris Campus / Champerret

Abstract

The large-scale diffusion and application of the Circular Economy model requires a number of levers to be activated. One of these is the implementation of systemic and collaborative operations that overcome the boundaries that usually separate industrial sectors.

This thesis is thus an exploratory study of collaborative operations for circularity purposes involving several industrial sectors in order to understand their facilitation, their operationalisation and to grasp the opportunities they offer for the circular model.

To this end, this research is divided into three parts. The first article of the thesis is devoted to a conceptual formulation of these cross-industrial circular collaborations.

The second is a qualitative study dedicated to the actors who facilitate circular collaborations within the supply network. The third is a study of four cases of these collaborations in order to understand their conditions of emergence and functioning.

The theoretical foundations of the thesis are based firstly on network theory, whose contributions explain the connection mechanisms and dynamics governing the circulation of resources between the members of a supply network. Secondly, the framework of inter-organisational proximity explains the geographical, organisational, cognitive, social and institutional alignment factors involved in these collaborations.

Jury