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Research areas

Objectives of this CD-Laboratory 

The objective of this CD Laboratory is to conduct basic research in the fields of sustainability sciences and social sciences to  

- operationalize the concepts of Sustainable Development and Circular Economy on the corporate and product level,  

- to use the full potential of digitization for Sustainable Product Management (SPM) and  

- to understand decision-making processes in companies and in supply networks as the basis of a lifecycle-wide implementation of SPM. 

 

This is achieved by a combination of theoretical and empirical with prescriptive research focused on method development and advancement.  

The expected results are  

(1) a better understanding  

…of implications, advantages, and obstacles of a circular economy, especially related to 
   sustainable development, 

…of the potential of new digital technologies (e.g., AI, blockchain, IoT) for sustainable product management,  

… of the role of interorganizational collaboration and decision-making in a circular economy and

(2) new methods and tools and methods for sustainability assessment and product design that 

…utilize new digital technologies,  

…are applicable in the early stages of product development, 

…have improved decision-support capabilities. 

 

Overview of the research so far 

Since 2018, the research team has published 27 journal articles, 32 conference papers, and four book chapters.  

These publications  

(1) enhance the understanding of state of the art and the future of sustainable and circular product management practices, specifically focusing on the role of digital technologies and intra- and inter-organizational collaboration;  

(2) introduce novel concepts and methodologies for data-driven sustainability assessment and design; and  

(3) delineate the requirements, use cases, and an information model for a Digital Product Passport (DPP) for electric vehicle batteries.  

In the following, findings from publications in these three groups are briefly summarized. The complete list of publications can be found here. 

 

Potentials and determinants of digital and collaborative sustainable product management  

Among the papers in the first group, examining the relationship between sustainable development and circular economy (CE) by analyzing 3822 journal papers has provided a more comprehensive understanding of how these concepts interrelate and influence one another (Schöggl et al., 2020). Investigating the implementation of CE practices in 131 forerunner companies (Stumpf et al., 2021) and 132 manufacturing companies (Schöggl et al., 2021; Schöggl et al., 2022) offered new insights into best practices and potential improvements for broader industry adoption. Identifying and prioritizing resources and capabilities (RCs) for enhancing circularity in the plastic packaging value chain in a Delphi study (Stumpf et al., 2023) has revealed the importance of complementarity of RCs along the supply chain for collaborative outcomes and CE performance. Exploring antecedents of firms’ CE performance in a statistical model confirmed the hypothesized positive effect of interorganizational collaboration and contextualized the role of new digital technologies and general dynamic capabilities (Schöggl et al., 2024). Analyzing actors, collaboration practices, and information flows in circular product development processes based on a set of semi-structured interviews (Diaz et al., 2021) revealed how decisions regarding the features of a product designed for a CE are made throughout the different phases of product development. Another study identified six key management factors influencing circular product design strategies through expert interviews with 24 circular economy forerunner companies, illustrating the factors' interactions and emphasizing the importance of integrating circular economy strategies for long-term competitive advantage. Lastly, defining the barriers to adopting circular design practices from an absorptive capacities perspective (Stumpf et al., 2022) has highlighted potential solutions for overcoming central obstacles and promoting sustainable innovation.  

 

Novel concepts and methodologies for collaborative and data-driven sustainability assessment and design  

The first set of publications in the second group has focused on mapping the potential and the state of implementation of new digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, or Internet of Things technology for SPM. First, a systematic literature review mapped digital technologies' current and potential future applications for sustainable product management by classifying 146 application examples in terms of their usability along the product life cycle, their role as enablers for CE strategies, and specific SPM activities (Rusch et al., 2022). The empirical counterpart was provided by two survey-based studies that investigated the technologies' degree of implementation in 132 Austrian (Schöggl et al., 2023) and 795 German firms (Neligan et al., 2022) and revealed data quality issues (Rusch et al., 2022) as well as sectoral and size-related differences (Schöggl et al. 2022). Finally, in collaboration with the CD-Laboratory’s scientific partners at the KNOW-Center, it was analyzed how data-science approaches can address specific problems in the data collection, analysis, and interpretation of sustainability data in general and with regards to Life Cycle Assessment in particular. 

The second set of publications consists of conceptual and prescriptive studies that aimed to advance inter- and intraorganizational collaboration practices in and the use of new digital technologies for sustainability assessment and product design. Among those studies, one paper proposed a framework for selecting and implementing case-specific circular product design strategies using general morphological analysis (Diaz et al., 2021; Diaz et al., 2022). Another article conceptualized how probabilistic machine learning can enable a confidentiality-preserving exchange of value chain data using the example of a vehicle battery’s state of health in a digital product passport (Berger et al., 2023). Furthermore, a framework for linking strategic sustainability management with operational excellence and a design thinking-based method for circular business model design and innovation (Santa-Maria et al., 2022) was developed. Finally, in collaboration with KTH, a new mathematical optimization framework was proposed, which allows the integration of environmental considerations into the technical design of vehicle components while fulfilling functional requirements (Bouchouireb et al., 2021).

 

Requirements, use cases, and information model for a Digital Product Passport for electric vehicle batteries 

As part of the with AVL, several publications focused on digital product passports (DPPs) for electric vehicle batteries. The first study proposes a digital battery passport (DBP) concept comprising 54 data points grouped into four information categories, including four practical use cases (Berger et al., 2022). The second paper details data needs and availability of EVB value chain actors in sustainable battery management, revealing diverging perspectives attributable to different positions and roles in the value chain (Berger et al., 2022). Furthermore, the general advantages and disadvantages of sustainability information sharing across the EVB supply chain were studied, identifying 34 aspects related to advantages and 23 aspects related to disadvantages through stakeholder focus group workshops, a literature review, expert interviews, and applying a transaction cost economic lens. Another study identifies barriers and enablers to digital product passport (DPP) implementation from the perspective of diffusion of innovation theory and the technology-organization-environment framework (Berger et al., 2023). It revealed the uncertainty of stakeholders as the most prominent adoption barrier and willingness to share information as the most prominent DPP enabler and driver,  

Furthermore, the end-of-life and battery second-use actors' data needs for sustainable battery management support were investigated (Berger et al., 2023). The study provided a ranked set of essential data points while highlighting the low accessibility of most of the 54 pre-defined data points due to data gaps, data gatekeepers, lack of data-sharing incentives, and data standardization. Finally, two use case-specific information models were proposed for the end-of-life battery second-use phases, translating data needs and requirements into unified modeling language (UML) models.