A research on exemplifying strategies for increasing scalability strategies of CBM activities

I am currently assisting the doctoral student E. Hultberg in researching strategies for increasing the scalability of circular business models (CBM) in the fashion industry. Here fore, a framework categorising scalability strategies used by fashion companies has been established. With regard to this framework, my contribution will be to exemplify scalability strategies from the current fashion industry and thereby assess the framework's usefulness. Thus, my research questions are:

1. What strategies do fashion retail companies currently use to scale up their circular business model activities? 
2. Can the developed framework be used to map/categorise strategies for scaling up circular business model activities in fashion retail?

In order to answer these research questions, I plan on first defining what CBM activities I will be looking for in companies' reports, whereafter these activities shall be mapped within Hultberg's framework of scalability strategies. The focus should lay on the analysis of CBM activities performed and how they are exemplified by the framework established. For the purpose of mapping CBM activities following strategies of upscaling, I will use an Excel table. Here, one dimension are the four quadrants of Hultberg's framework indicating scalability strategies within growth/connection orientation and efficiency/adaptability orientation. The second dimension are CBM activities to be mapped in reports.

First, to grasp the full picture, I read reports concerning CBM in general and then in how far the fashion industry acts upon it. This step was useful to acquaint myself with benefits as well as challenges of implementing CBM and which activities it encompasses. However, even though this research provided me with a theoretical background, I got lost in the vastness of information and confused the original purpose of my research questions; after all, the research is about upscaling already implemented CBM and not on how to implement CBM in the first place. Nonetheless, I decided to use gained insights for my field study report as it answers why CBM are implemented and supports the necessity of upscaling CBM activities.

Currently, I am revising literature to select CBM activities I will be looking for. At this point, I find it hard to cluster these activities as the subject is quite broad and literature uses different wording for concepts, strategies, patterns and so on. However, since my supervisor suggested to focus on one guiding article to define CBM activities, I am mainly using the construct provided by this source.

So far, I am very happy with the balance between the guidance provided by my supervisor and the degree of freedom wherein I can choose on how to proceed. Even though the current situation of COVID-19 has required us to make changes to my original task of establishing a semi-structured interview, I am positive about the revised approach.