An Exploration of Circular Economy Practices and Performance Among Romanian Producers

Abstract

Economic growth is the mandate of the global economy and with our planet’s population poised to reach 10 billion people, economists are searching for sustainable economic growth approaches that do not increase raw materials consumption nor deplete and damage our environment. This mandate is the heart of the Circular Economy (CE), a challenge to theoreticians and practitioners alike to continue global economic growth, but with fewer resources and protective methods for our environment. The European Union (EU) economies were early adopters of CE and are now demanding similar adoptions from its recently integrated members from the East. Romania is one of the laggard states in this transition, given its heritage and lack of economic sophistication. Our paper identifies the practices and performance of Romanian producers regarding the implementation of the CE principles, so future recommendations can be formulated. In surveying the Romanian firms, we applied a cluster analysis based on their level of green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) practices. The respondents were grouped into two clusters: “low green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) scorers” and “high green-oriented supply chain cooperation (GSCC) scorers’. The results suggest that cluster membership partially influence CE practices and fully influence CE-targeted performance.

Performance Evaluation Model of Romanian Manufacturing Listed Companies by Fuzzy Ahp and Topsis

“…Yuksel and Dagdeviren (2010), integrated BSC (Balanced Scorecard) approach, which is a method of determining business performance using indicators on the basis of vision and strategies, with fuzzy ANP technique to determine the performance level of a business in the manufacturing industry. Botezat et al (2018) showed that in the case of Romanian producers, the practices related to "green purchasing" and "customer cooperation" significantly determine the level of companies' performance. Hategan and Curea-Pitorac (2017), used as non-financial indicators the number of employees, the listed period and the ownership structure of the companies (private or state owed).…”

Circular Economy Indicators as a Supporting Tool for European Regional Development Policies

“…In the first step of construction of the CE index, each indicator was categorized as one with a positive or negative impact on the index. For variables with a positive impact, values were transformed as in Equation (1) [44,45,53]:…”

“…There are a few studies proposing frameworks for transition to the circular economy model based on various incentives and instruments [51][52][53], but there is a lack of a system of indicators for evaluation and monitoring of CE progress at the regional level. Thus the main purpose of the current research was proposing a possible system of such regional level CE evaluation indicators.…”

Social Responsibility of Firms and the Impact of Bio-Economy in Intelligent Use of Renewable Energy Source

“…If a new style of governance were adopted to continue cooperation, networking and improving value chain specialization as a result of regional policy motivation, if there were networks of companies leading up to the bottom to top clustering and focus on innovative management and learning processes, the transition of Romanian producers to EU requirements could be facilitated. But in the absence of concrete measures of this kind, the Romanian producers are in danger of failing to cope with the transition difficulties imposed by the EU legislation, and finally, the Romanian companies can be excluded from the European market by competitive pressures (Botezat, 2018). It seems that there are specialists in this area because Romania has developed innovative approaches with other countries, such as the "Green Laboratory of Recycling 2012 initiative that received the Gold Medal for Excellence in the SME category as part of the European Corporate Social Responsibility Award (CSR)".…”