Business Digital Transformation Processes toward Circular Economy and Sustainability: 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Industries and businesses in general are facing new challenges, and new opportunities, relating to sustainability. Environmental impact (waste, water consumption, etc.) and social responsibility are now the concerns of most consumers and governments. There is increasing pressure toward greater transparency in value chains, including supply chains. Interorganizational business processes need to be adapted in order to enable traceability along value chains, integrating intraorganizational business processes. Traceability systems may provide information to all stakeholders (business partners and final consumers), contributing to greater safety in food processes, to greater social responsibility in cross-country supply chains, and to greater transparency in every process. To engage sustainability, value chains must become circular. The circular economy is a promising solution to reduce waste and promote reuse, creating self-sustainable processes at many levels: the business sector, companies, cities, nations, etc.

Platforms to support the circular economy and to support traceability in supply and value chains are needed for efficient data registering and sharing among all participants involved, and to implement and assure transparency along the value chain and to ensure confidence in consumers’ and other business partners’ decisions when having to choose a product, business partner or brand.

This Special Issue aims to contribute to push forward the sustainability, through intra- and inter-organizational business process transformation, namely optimization, circularization, or, simply, digitalization, allowing traceability and promoting transparency though the value chains.

In particular, this Special Issue should cover, but is not limited to, the following topics:

• Business process redesign toward greater social and environmental sustainability;
• Business process redesign toward circular economy and traceability;
• Digitalization and integration of business processes;
• Traceability in value and supply chains promoting transparency and social and environmental sustainability;
• Circular economy promoting sustainability at any business sector (textile and clothing industry, car industry, building, energy, agriculture, food supply chains, marketing, etc.);
• Using emerging technologies (e.g., IoT, Blockchain) for traceability and the circular economy;
• Using gamification techniques for engaging the final consumer into the circular economy.

Research and review articles are therefore invited to be submitted to this Special Issue to contribute to sustainability and highlight the sustainable aspect of traceability and circular economy technologies.

Prof. Dr. Estrela Ferreira Cruz
Prof. Dr. António Miguel Rosado da Cruz
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainability
• circular economy
• value and supply chains
• traceability
• transparency
• business models
• business processes
• environmental sustainability
• social sustainability
• enterprise architecture for sustainability
• sustainable organizations
• sustainable businesses
• sustainable business models
• sustainable intra- and interorganizational business process
• gamification for sustainability
• IoT for sustainability
• blockchain for sustainability