Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss how organisational complexities influence the design of circular business models, which have recently been introduced as a new panacea for aligning the interests of business with the needs of the environment.Design/methodology/approach: The Service Shirt, a new garment concept, is used as an illustrative case example for demonstrating some of the organisational complexities of making circular business models operable. The shirt was developed through a series of design workshops for the fashion brand Fashion Alpha.Findings: The analysis highlights multiple challenges emerging when a fashion product with a significantly extended lifecycle passes through different users, organisations and business models. It is concluded that it is difficult to talk about a circular business model (singular) as circular economy solutions depend on the contributions of multiple stakeholders with business models.Practical implications: The findings illustrate how fashion companies interested in the circular economy fundamentally have to rethink conventional approaches to value, organisational boundaries and temporality.Originality/value: Drawing on a case example from the fashion industry, the paper demonstrates the organisational complexities linked to the design of new business models based on circular economy thinking, as these require the coordination of actions between autonomous actors driven by different logics regarding value creation, value delivery and value capture.

Research question: The objective of this paper is to examine how Danish football (‘soccer’) clubs perceive organisational tensions, and to explore the relationship between the level of tensions and the level of CSR activity. Research methods: The analysis is based on survey responses from 226 Danish football clubs organised in the Danish Football Association (DFA). Results and findings: It is concluded that clubs primarily face tensions linked to football/non-football activities and elite/non-elite discussions. Moreover, the results demonstrate a significant, positive relationship between the level of organisational tensions and the clubs’ engagement in social and environmental activities. Implications: The paper moves beyond isolated studies of individual tensions by analysing how organisation members perceive the multitude of oppositional demands permeating organisations. Moreover, the quantitative analysis advances our knowledge about the complex relationship between organisational tensions and CSR.