Circular Intellectual Capital: Rethinking Intangibles for a Regenerative and Sustainable Economy
The transition to a knowledge-based and circular economy is redefining the role of intangible resources in sustainable value creation. While Green Intellectual Capital (GIC) has linked environmental concerns with IC, today’s global challenges demand a more systemic and regenerative perspective. Circular Intellectual Capital (CIC) represents a novel framework integrating circular economy principles within IC, supporting transformation through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and system redesign. Despite its emerging relevance, CIC remains conceptually and empirically underdeveloped. This Special Issue offers a platform to deepen and broaden the understanding of CIC, providing a space for original research on its theoretical foundations, practical implications, and measurement. By moving beyond mitigation to regeneration, the issue addresses an urgent call to reconceptualize intangibles as enablers of circular transformation across firms, ecosystems, and society.
List of Topic Areas
- Conceptual and theoretical developments on the integration of circular economy principles into IC framework.
- Research methodologies for exploring CIC in organizational and ecosystem contexts.
- Financial and strategic consequences of developing and leveraging CIC.
- Disclosure practices of CIC in corporate reports, websites and social media platforms.
- Governance mechanisms supporting the development and mobilization of circular-oriented intangibles.
- Integration of circularity into IC management, accounting, and performance evaluation.
- Indicators, metrics, and frameworks for measuring CIC components and performance.
- The role of intangible resources in enabling circular innovation and transformation.
- Knowledge sharing, collaboration, and dynamic capabilities in circular contexts.
- Organizational culture, learning processes, and leadership for circular-oriented intangibles.
- Green intellectual capital and circular economy principles.
- Greenwashing risks in the context of CIC.
- Governing intellectual capital for ethical and anti-greenwashing practices.
Submission Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available here:
Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see:
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Dates
Opening date for manuscript submissions: 1 October 2025
Closing date for manuscript submissions: 31 January 2026
