Planetary Boundaries and Sustainable Business Models: Circular Ecosystems and Strategies for Climate Neutral Development

Submit your manuscript here from 1 September 2026!

Introduction

This Special Issue seeks to advance current debates on how firms and industries can align their activities with planetary boundaries while developing sustainable business models and circular ecosystems. In doing so, it addresses a central challenge in contemporary management research: how to reconcile economic activity with the ecological limits of the Earth’s system. The issue focuses on the role of circular strategies, eco-innovation, and inter-organizational collaboration in enabling climate-neutral and resource-efficient development. It invites contributions that examine not only firm-level practices but also the broader ecosystems in which these practices are embedded, including governance arrangements and collaborative networks.

By bringing together insights from strategy, entrepreneurship, innovation, and environmental management, the Special Issue aims to offer a more integrated understanding of how sustainability can be embedded in business practice, in ways that are both analytically rigorous and practically relevant.

The contribution of this Special Issue lies in its explicit effort to connect the planetary boundaries framework with research on sustainable business models and circular ecosystems. While both areas have developed rapidly, they have largely remained disconnected, with limited attention to how firm-level strategies relate to broader ecological constraints.

This Special Issue addresses this gap by adopting a more systemic perspective that links business model innovation to ecosystem-level dynamics and environmental outcomes. It also places particular emphasis on the enabling role of digital technologies, data-driven environmental management, and collaborative governance structures. In doing so, the issue moves beyond incremental approaches to sustainability and instead engages with the more fundamental question of how business activity can be reconfigured to operate within safe environmental limits. This positioning offers a distinctive and timely contribution to the field.

List of Topic Areas

1) Business models that explicitly integrate planetary boundary constraints (e.g., climate change, biodiversity, land use, and biogeochemical flows) into strategy and operations.  

2) Circular strategies for CO₂-related technologies (e.g., carbon capture, utilization, and mineralization) and other decarbonization pathways that enhance environmental quality and reduce pollution.  

3) Sustainable business models aimed at reducing hazardous waste and resource intensity in industrial and agricultural systems, in line with preventative and remedial environmental management approaches.  

4) Circular ecosystems, including industrial symbiosis, regional clusters, and shared infrastructures, that enable firms to close material loops and collectively operate within planetary boundaries.  

5)The role of digitalization, AI-based monitoring, and data-driven environmental management in supporting circular and sustainable business models.

6) Triple helix dynamics and broader innovation ecosystems (university–industry–government collaboration) in advancing circular ecosystems and sustainability-oriented business models.  

7) Comparative studies examining sustainable business models and circular strategies across emerging and advanced economies, with implications for environmental quality management.Innovation, policy, and sustainability transitions

Submissions Information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Registration and access are available at: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/meq

Author guidelines must be strictly followed. Please see: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/meq#jlp_author_guidelines​

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 Deadlines

Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 01/09/2026 
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 05/01/2027​