Critical success factors for circular economy in the waste electrical and electronic equipment sector in an emerging economy: Implications for stakeholders

Wastage from electrical and electronic hardware includes a huge range of unsafe and complex materials, which can cause major natural and health issues. A promising approach that can bring about change and help in addressing this wastage is the circular economy (CE). However, understanding how this approach can be successfully implemented when it comes to waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), has remained surprisingly nascent to date. Therefore, this paper contributes to a better understanding of CE implementation in the WEEE sector by exploring its critical success factors (CSFs) and identifying their causal relationships and hierarchy of importance. To achieve this, a systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to identify and understand the CSFs that influence the implementation of CE that were subsequently refined based on industry practitioners' inputs in Bangladesh via a structured survey. Then, the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory approach integrated with intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IF-DEMATEL) was employed to understand their causal relationship and hierarchy of importance. A wide range of CSFs were identified, of which "Market Contenders" and "Formation of Cross-functional Teams" were found to be more prominent for the successful implementation of CE to address WEEE, and that "Global Standard" influences the majority of other CSFs, including "Skilled Manpower", "Financial Sustainability", "Consumer Awareness", etc. The results of this study will help professionals and policymakers implement better e-waste management systems, which can lead to the development of eco-friendly businesses and innovative and flexible production systems.