Born or Grown: Enablers and Barriers to Circular Business in Europe

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very interesting investigation. The results are clearly discussed. I recognize that it has some limitations, but they were identified by the authors.
This is a very useful study for different academic and other audiences.
I suggest that the authors highlight the added value compared to previous research.

 

Author Response

We thank Reviewer 1 for a favourable review and we have taken up the suggestion to highlight the added value compared to previous research. 

Reviewer 2 Report

OVERALL COMMENTS

This manuscript aims to report on the barriers and enablers for business in a circular economy, differentiating those of businesses who were born circular and those who incorporated more circular aspects later. The study is interesting and relevant to the much-needed research in business circularity. Although quite simple, this study has merit. Nonetheless, I believe it should go through revisions before it can be accepted for publication. I provide greater details in the comments below.

 

ABSTRACT:

Your abstract provides a fair overview of your research. However, I believe you should cite the main or provide an overview of the enablers and barriers you found.

 

KEYWORDS:

I believe you should take advantage of keywords for indexing. Use as many keywords as allowed by the journal in order to increase discoverability of your manuscript in case it is accepted.

 

1. INTRODUCTION

In section 1.2 (SMEs and pioneers), and in fact all throughout the remainder of the introduction, why do you give emphasis to SMEs? If it should be the case, it needs further reasoning. It is not justifiably clear why SMEs should be given highlight.

 

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS

When it comes to Figure 1, figures should be able to stand alone from the text. Thus, in chart b), please either provide the full form of C&D in the picture or in a legend. For chart c), please inform how you defined how large an organisation is, e.g., by turnover, or number of employees, in any way, please inform what criterion was used in each class (e.g., for number of employees, 250+ is large, between 50 and 249 is medium, etc.).

In “2.2. Data Collection”, although you provide a summary of the case studies in Appendix A, I suggest that provide information of how you built the case studies. A list of the aspects that you analysed and an overview of what the final case would show should be enough.

 

3. RESULTS

In row 227, Philips is misspelled. Please correct it and proofread the manuscript as a whole for similar issues, such as the one found in row 258, as I believe the acronym stands for waste electric and electronic equipment instead of “electronic and electronic”.

Please improve the quality of Figure 2.

 

4. DISCUSSIONS

I suggest that you change the name of this section to reflect that you also provide the final remarks of your research, for instance, “Discussions and Conclusions”, or other heading that the authors find better suiting.

In row 521, I believe you meant emergent, instead of “emergant”.

Your conclusions are justified by your results. Nonetheless, I believe that this manuscript could benefit from a more objective approach to guiding both BC and GC businesses on how they could go about overcoming the barriers you identified. I suggest that you add it to this last section, in a very objective way, as it would improve the value of your research.

 

In the “Author Contributions”, the following text can be excluded: “For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used”, and “Please turn to CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.”.

Author Response

We thank Reviewer 2 for a favourable review and for very helpful comments.  

• We have now included the overview of the enablers and barriers in the abstract.
• We have added more keywords, useful for indexing and discoverability.
• We have clarified the link between “Born Circular” enterprises and SMEs.
• We included notes to clarify Figure 1 (abbreviations, criteria for definitions)
• We provided a brief description of the final cases chosen in the text, the aspects of the cases that we analysed, as well as a diagram of the process we followed.
• We have checked the whole manuscript for errors and typos.
• We have improved the quality of Figure 2 (now Figure 3).
• We have now included a specific “Conclusions” section for our final remarks.
• We have beefed up the discussion with some objective remarks (and citations) as to how the barriers identified can be overcome.
• We have excluded the unnecessary text from the Author Contributions section.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this manuscript. The topic of the paper is interesting. The manuscript “Born or Grown: Enablers and Barriers to Circular Business in Europe” is devoted to study the specific enablers and barriers that concern established firms that are ‘growing’ into circularity and contrast these with those that are ‘born’ circular. 

In this context, the authors illustrate their assumptions with eighteen case studies of businesses in Europe. The authors have tried to bring a serious work with this paper.

There are a few imperfections those must be improved:

The introduction (Section 1. Introduction) is sufficiently developed. The authors made a synthesis and identified research gaps in the literature. The only suggestion - please, present the paper's structure at the end of this section.

Discussion section - all aspects regarding final conclusions should be moved from this section to the last section of the manuscript. A special Conclusion section is needed.

Author Response

We thank Reviewer 3 for a favourable review and for the helpful suggestions made. We have now presented the paper's structure within the introduction and we moved the final conclusions to the last section of the manuscript entitled “Conclusion”