Abstract

Circular Economy (CE) has taken a key role in discussion on innovation for sustainable economic growth. Reducing, Reusing, and Recycling — 3Rs — are widely acknowledged as primary principles and activities driving the transition. However, pursued goals are hard to reach if genuine implementation of these principles cannot be verified. For this verification, technological innovations such as Blockchain (BT) have shown promise, but it is not yet clear how CE and BT function together in a wider scale to promote innovative solutions. The global context of CE and BT challenge them both. Acknowledging this context, our study examines the potential of utilizing BT for CE in global value chains (GVC). Adopting a multiple-case study approach and examining global value chains of five multinational enterprises, we show how global CE-oriented value chains’ features in terms of transparency, security, and dispersion, as well as control-orientation, location-specificity, and governance could be utilized with BT.