Circular Economy Through Living Community

Abstract

This paper presents findings on the paradigmatic nature of business model development emerging from embedded, transdisciplinary research in a primarily linear economic context in the Netherlands. Reflecting on the author’s critical ethnographic inputs from long-term operational research in a circular economic context and the sociological nature of community, new theory is proposed showing the paradigmatic matching of individuals and conglomerates with a linear economic outlook and persons and communities with a circular economic outlook. This research concludes that business models for a circular economy should be based on community perspectives, rather than individual outlooks, and presents an example showing what this could mean.