@article{8f04672d38d5471ca67af3c3e6266a8c,
title = "Intermediation dilemmas in facilitated industrial symbiosis",
abstract = "Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a key paradigm for achieving circular economy among industrial firms. Achieving new IS projects often requires outside facilitation, and intermediaries can help solidify and expand existing IS networks. While various intermediary roles have been identified in the literature, less attention has been paid to the potential challenges that intermediaries might encounter in their activities. Based on the case of the national symbiosis network FISS, the Finnish Industrial Symbiosis system, this study investigates the dilemmas faced when organizing IS networks. It identifies openness and value demonstration dilemmas, which hinder intermediary-firm relations. It also identifies collaborative intermediation processes among intermediaries in seeking to uncover value, ensuring community embedding of new networks and selective integration of intermediation activities. These processes can help overcome the intermediation dilemmas. The results on the collaborative intermediation and its development over time contribute to research on facilitated IS and on intermediaries in sustainability transitions. For policy-makers, the study pinpoints the need for collaborative intermediation where both national and regional intermediaries are involved to ensure both economies of scale and flexibility. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.",
keywords = "Intermediaries, Industrial symbiosis, Dilemmas, Intermediation, Sustainability transition, Waste to value, CIRCULAR ECONOMY, SUSTAINABILITY, INNOVATION, EMERGENCE, ECOLOGY, LEVEL, ORGANIZATIONS, CONSEQUENCES, ECOSYSTEMS, EVOLUTION",
author = "Samuli Patala and Asta Salmi and Nancy Bocken",
note = "Funding Information: Circular economy has emerged as an important vision, including a range of strategies to tackle sustainability challenges (Blomsma and Brennan, 2017). It has gained popularity in the business and policy arenas supported by organizations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (Bocken et al., 2017), and also attracted a rapidly expanding body of research (Geissdoerfer et al., 2017; Ghisellini et al., 2016; Murray et al., 2017). However, the transition to the circular economy requires vast changes in production and consumption patterns. This requires new types of technologies, products and business models and wider societal changes, and, if not ?designed? appropriately, the circular economy can lead to negative rebound effects and greater levels of material consumption (Zink and Geyer, 2017).In 2013, an official national network (Finnish Industrial Symbiosis system, FISS) was created to promote IS especially with an inter-organizational perspective. The program was modeled after the NISP in the UK. At the national level, the coordinators of the network promote IS by spreading awareness and organizing resource workshops. The program also operates on the regional level, where currently 14 of the 19 administrative regions in Finland have a designated coordinating organization to promote IS in its region. As of 2019, 623 firms with 4734 resources have been involved in the network's activities. A core activity in the network are ?resource workshops?, where diverse firms in a region are brought together in a collaborative workshop. The firms list their excess resources as well as their resource needs, in order to find resource synergies with other firms. These resource flows are then presented in a national database in order to further facilitate resource exchanges. The program also promotes implementation of IS by helping the firms to find technical expertise, legal advice and funding.The data collection for this study was supported by Business Finland (ex. Tekes) via the DemaNET project [grant number 40477/11]. The article writing was supported by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland via the Finix-project [grant nr. 327296]. Funding Information: The data collection for this study was supported by Business Finland (ex. Tekes) via the DemaNET project [grant number 40477/11 ]. The article writing was supported by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland via the Finix-project [grant nr. 327296 ]. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020",
year = "2020",
month = jul,
day = "10",
doi = "10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.121093",
language = "English",
volume = "261",
journal = "Journal of Cleaner Production",
issn = "0959-6526",
publisher = "Elsevier Ltd",
}