The circular economy (CE) is an emergent concept to rethink and redesign how our economy works. The concept recognizes effective and efficient economic functioning at multiple scales—governments and individuals, globally and locally; for businesses, large and small. CE represents a systemic shift that builds long-term resilience at multiple levels (macro, meso and micro); generating new business and economic opportunities while providing environmental and societal benefits. Blockchain, an emergent and critical technology, is introduced to the circular economy environment as a potential enabler for many circular economic principles. Blockchain technology supported information systems can improve circular economy performance at multiple levels. Product deletion, a neglected but critical effort in product management and product portfolio management, is utilized as an illustrative business scenario as to blockchain’s application in a circular economy research context. Product deletion, unlike product proliferation, has received minimal attention from both academics and practitioners. Product deletion decisions need to be evaluated and analyzed in the circular economy context. CE helps address risk aversion issues in product deletions such as inventory, waste and information management. This paper is the first to conceptualize the relationships amongst blockchain technology, product deletion and the circular economy. Many nuances of relationships are introduced in this study. Future evaluation and critical reflections are also presented with a need for a rigorous and robust research agenda to evaluate the multiple and complex relationships and interplay amongst technology, policy, commerce and the natural environment.

The protection of original achievements including patents and copyrights is a significant and critical issue in today's knowledge-driven economy. In this article, we propose and develop a blockchain service architecture to enhance information traceability and protection effectiveness. Our proposed service architecture is enabled by the core functionalities of blockchain technology including distributed data storage, peer-to-peer transmission, consensus mechanisms, and encryption algorithms. Through this blockchain-based traceability system, we can record, secure, validate, and track original achievements’ registrations and other related transactions. The results of our simulation experiments further validate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed traceability system design. Our experimental analysis shows that the proposed blockchain-based design can effectively enhance original achievements traceability with an embedded automatic incentive rewarding mechanism for both the creation and protection of original achievements. Moreover, our performance analysis and comparative analysis show that the proposed method has more advantages over several other methods. While our study provides an effective solution to address the existing challenges in intellectual property rights and achievements patents protection, the breadth of the blockchain concept and its applications require nuanced investigations in many different contexts. Thus, the proposed blockchain-based traceability system highlights the potential for broader applications of this disruptive technology in many other domains.

Products and associated materials are important supply chain flows. Product management greatly influences supply chain performance. Supply chain information is also critical for sound product management. Product deletion, rationalization, or discontinuation research is an important dimension often overlooked in product management. It is a critical issue for many managerial reasons; many espoused in this article. Product deletion is typically a multi-staged process including recognition, analysis and revitalization, evaluation and decision formation, and implementation. Each stage requires complicated information and data support from supply chain activities. Failure in information generating, understanding, and accuracy can prove risky for rational product deletion. Blockchain technology may help address information challenges. Blockchain technology provides traceability, transparency, security, accuracy and smart execution, which can all contribute to the product deletion and rationalization decision. Application recommendations and managerial insights into product deletion decision making processes with blockchain technology are provided.

Organizations have demonstrated increasing interest in both leaning and greening activities. Lean manufacturing practices, with an emphasis on waste elimination, have an affinity with environmentally conscious green practices within organizations. Lean practices have diffused across the supply chain and to the service industry, while interest in the greening of supply chains has grown simultaneously. Linking the greening of supply chains and lean practices within a healthcare environment is relatively underexplored. This paper presents a process framework that defines specific dimensions and synergies between lean and green, to support further exploration of green lean supply chains in healthcare and particularly hospitals. In addition, the application of lean and green to hospitals explicitly brings in the third dimension of social sustainability because it focuses on the healthcare industry. The framework is applied to three cases to exemplify opportunities to green hospital processes. The process framework is also used to generate propositions for additional research in this emergent field.

The circular economy (CE) seeks to maintain products and materials at their highest utility and value. The organisational and governmental policy have seised onto the CE philosophy to advance socio-economic and environmental development. CE remains an essentially contested concept – making its utilisation as a foundation for managerial and policy decisions challenging. Circularity assessment has not been systematically adopted, especially within supply chain management. Using critical scholarly and practical evidential foundation, we proposed a comprehensive set of metrics that can be utilised in supplier selection, monitoring, and development for circularity. These metrics include the macro, meso, and micro levels. A group decision-making method integrating best-worst method (BWM), regret theory (RT), and dual hesitant fuzzy sets (DHFS) for circular economy and circularity (CEC) supplier evaluation and selection is introduced – providing instrumental value for the identified metrics typology. The proposed BWM-DHFE-RT integrative analytical method can accommodate decisionmaker psychological behaviour under uncertainty while simultaneously capturing divergent or conflicting opinions of different decision-makers. An illustrative business scenario is utilised to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. Though the proposed CE performance metrics and methodology are used for CEC supplier management reasons they have broader applicability. Future research and application directions are discussed.