This report presents a current-state analysis of research on how municipalities and companies work with sustainable transition, with a focus on circularity and climate pledges, complemented by empirical insights from actors in the Västra Götaland region (companies: climate pledges 12–17; municipalities: climate pledges 23, 24, 25, 27). The report has been produced within Work Package 2 (led by Linköping University) in the project Circular Climate Pledges – Application and Needs Analysis, coordinated by Lindholmen Science Park.

Previous research shows that circular initiatives in both the public and private sectors are often driven by strong ambitions but are characterized by fragmented implementation, where pilot projects dominate and integration into core operations remains limited. Success is closely linked to factors such as clear governance, collaboration, competence, and access to resources, while barriers often relate to organizational silos, lack of incentives, uncertainty in markets and regulatory frameworks, and limited capacity. Overall, the research indicates that the transition is systemic and requires both internal changes and the development of external support systems in order to be scaled up.

The analysis of the empirical insights shows that both municipalities and companies use climate pledges to structure and legitimize sustainability work, but often underestimate the complexity of implementation, which requires increased collaboration, coordination, and support. At the same time, the drivers and challenges differ—municipalities are more shaped by organizational and political issues, while companies are influenced by markets and value chains—but both face similar systemic barriers.

Finally, the recommendations for municipalities, companies, and support actors emphasize that circular climate pledges need to be integrated into core operations and regular governance, combined with experimentation and planned scaling, and supported by collaboration, cross-functional work, and more coordinated and needs-adapted support systems.

Key takeaways

Circular climate pledges are widely used to structure and legitimize sustainability work, but their implementation is more complex than initially anticipated.Both municipalities and companies depend on coordination, collaboration, and inter-nal champions to translate pledges into practice.Key barriers differ across sectors (organizational and governance challenges in mu-nicipalities; market and value chain constraints in companies), but share similar sys-temic roots.Current efforts are often fragmented and pilot-driven, highlighting the need to inte-grate circular practices into core operations and governance structures.Effective support requires tailored, coordinated, and practice-oriented approaches that enable scaling beyond isolated initiatives.

Denna rapport innehåller en nulägesanalys av aktuell forskning om kommuners och företags arbete med hållbar omställning, med fokus på cirkularitet och klimatlöften, och kompletterar detta med empiriska insikter från aktörer i Västra Götalandsregionen (företag: löfte 12–17, kommuner: löfte 23, 24, 25, 27). Rapporten tas fram inom arbetspaket 2 (lett av LiU) i projektet Cirkulära klimatlöften – tillämpning och behovsanalys, koordinerat av Lindholmen Science Park.

Tidigare forskning visar att cirkulära initiativ i både offentlig och privat sektor ofta drivs av starka ambitioner men präglas av fragmenterad implementering, där pilotprojekt dominerar och integrering i kärnverksamhet är begränsad. Framgång är nära kopplad till faktorer som tydlig styrning, samverkan, kompetens och tillgång till resurser, medan hinder ofta rör organisatoriska silos, brist på incitament, osäkerhet i marknad och regelverk samt begränsad kapacitet. Sammantaget pekar forskningen på att omställningen är systemisk och kräver både interna förändringar och utvecklade externa stödsystem för att kunna skalas upp.

Analysen av de empiriska insikterna visar att både kommuner och företag använder klimatlöften för att strukturera och legitimera hållbarhetsarbetet, men underskattar ofta genomförandets komplexitet, vilket kräver ökad samverkan, koordinering och stöd. Samtidigt skiljer sig drivkrafter och utmaningar – kommuner präglas mer av organisatoriska och politiska frågor, medan företag påverkas av marknad och värdekedjor – men båda möter liknande systemiska hinder.

Avslutningsvis betonar framtida rekommendationer till kommuner, företag och stödaktörer att cirkulära klimatlöften behöver integreras i kärnverksamhet och ordinarie styrning, kombineras med testande och planerad uppskalning samt stödjas av samverkan, tvärfunktionellt arbete och mer samordnade och behovsanpassade stödsystem.

Viktiga lärdomar

• Cirkulära klimatåtaganden används i stor utsträckning för att strukturera och legitimera hållbarhetsarbete, men genomförandet är mer komplext än vad som ursprungligen förväntades.
• Både kommuner och företag är beroende av samordning, samarbete och interna eldsjälar för att omsätta åtaganden i praktiken.
• Centrala hinder skiljer sig mellan sektorer (organisatoriska och styrningsrelaterade utmaningar i kommuner; marknads- och värdekedjerelaterade begränsningar i företag), men har liknande systemiska rötter.
• Nuvarande insatser är ofta fragmenterade och pilotdrivna, vilket belyser behovet av att integrera cirkulära arbetssätt i kärnverksamhet och styrningsstrukturer.
• Effektivt stöd kräver skräddarsydda, samordnade och praktiknära angreppssätt som möjliggör uppskalning bortom isolerade initiativ.

This paper combines literature on program management and the multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions to analyze how a firm within the petrochemical industry negotiates across niches and regimes in its transition-oriented program. The analysis shows that this strategic change program comprises three types of projects—exploitation, exploration, and hybrid. In the context of the firms’ ambition to attain net-zero emissions, individual projects of all three types play distinctive roles. In exploitation projects, negotiations stay at the regime level, which reinforces existing institutions but also enables a transfer of certain emission-reducing technologies. In contrast, exploration and hybrid projects entail negotiations that cut across niche and regime levels. For hybrid projects, we find that niche-regime negotiations remain predominantly internal, while they are externalized in exploration projects. Clarifying the relationship between internal and external negotiations, our work suggests that strategic project sequencing could facilitate transition-oriented programs. Run in sequence, exploration projects may help mobilize external support and resources, hybrid projects can safeguard internal support, and exploitation projects can enable companywide diffusion of practices that support the net-zero objectives.

Sustainability transitions, such as electrifying the process industry, require a bundle of related innovations to make meaningful progress. Drawing on literature on innovation through tinkering, that is, adaptive, typically small-scale experimentation with various forms of innovation, and applying a micropolitical perspective, this qualitative study explores how actors within an ecosystem tinker to bundle innovations to provide the necessary directionality for such transitions. Based on a case study of electrifying the process industry in a petrochemical cluster in Northern Europe, the paper presents an emergent process model of three complementary modes of tinkering: tinkering to codevelop a common vision for the transition, tinkering to create new spaces for bundling transition-oriented innovations and tinkering to arrive at transition-oriented innovations. The combined use of these modes helps overcome collective inaction, enabling actors to essentially tinker their way towards sustainability. The findings show that tinkering, enacted through micropolitical manoeuvring, provides the flexibility, adaptability and experimentation needed for actors to advance their sustainability agendas while still moving in a unified direction.

There is a long tradition of research on university-industry collaboration, but recent developments—including expanded academic engagement, the rise of new intermediaries and platforms for science-industry engagement, the revitalization of corporate science, and the development of mission-oriented research policies—call for fresh investigation. These changes have raised new questions about ways to align diverse knowledge transfer practices, foster meaningful collaboration, and support evolving academic engagement and corporate science practices. The papers included in this Special Issue examine science-industry relations at three levels. At the micro level, they look at how individual motivations, identities, and engagement practices shape knowledge exchange and research productivity. At the meso level, they explore organizational structures, strategic intent, and governance mechanisms that enhance scientific development and innovation. And at the macro level, they investigate ecosystem-wide dynamics, including intermediaries, living labs, and broader policy landscapes that foster interdisciplinary co-creation and legitimacy-building. Together, these perspectives underscore the transformative potential of science-industry collaboration while illustrating the inherent complexities of the process. Reflecting on these insights, this Special Issue proposes an agenda for expanding methodological approaches, contextualizing research across diverse settings, developing novel theoretical anchors, and addressing Grand Challenges through more integrated and inclusive collaborations.

When organizations join forces to collaborate for creativity and innovation, they embark on a journey in a ‘space in-between’, created through their interaction with other collaborating organizational actors. This organizational space is not a pre-existing physical container, rather it should be understood as a moving and evolving process. In-between spaces are relational spaces of becoming, embracing disorder and ambiguity, created through social relationships. As such, in-between spaces also imply a state of ‘liminality’ where boundaries, actor motives and mandates are often unclear and fluid, which can make difficult for practitioners to navigate the continuously negotiated collaborative relationships.

This chapter explores the multitude of relationships in spaces in-between, drawing on studies of triple-helix collaborations in Northern Europe. Grounded in research on organizational spaces and collaborative relationships, the chapter outlines three distinct spaces nuancing our understanding of interactions in in-between spaces; the member space, the learning space, and the delivery space. This chapter articulates what separates these spaces, discusses the interrelation of the spaces, and problematizes the sustaining of spaces over time. The implications of the variety of collaborative relationships in spaces in-between are outlined, contributing to further theorizing of collaborative innovation.

Although several studies have extensively discussed the role of intrapreneurs, individuals’ experiences of intrapreneurial processes in the academic context remain largely unexplored. The prominence of intrapreneurial logic in academia has led to increased institutional complexity and highlighting the need for an improved understanding of how to navigate multiple logics present at individual, organizational, and field levels to attain the desired intrapreneurial outcomes. To address these challenges, we propose an integrative framework that captures both organizational and individual-level responses to these multiple logics, while also incorporating intrapreneurial logic. Upon analyzing data from nineteen intrapreneurs across three universities, this study reveals that universities actively uphold the academic logic that intrapreneurs identify as a barrier, compelling them to refine their skills and actively hybridize logics by integrating multiple specific elements of intrapreneurship, teaching, and research. Simultaneously, universities incorporate intrapreneurial logic into their operational processes, even combining multiple logics, which intrapreneurs leverage within their own activities to push their ideas forward. The study offers implications for intrapreneurship literature, academic management, and policymakers to more effectively foster intrapreneurial activities.

Industrial PhD students, affiliating to industrial firms and academic institutions, hold unique boundary-spanning positions as they engage in knowledge co-creation through university–industry collaboration (UIC). Despite much research on knowledge transfer processes and boundary spanners in inter-organizational contexts, firms who engage in UIC remain uncertain about how to reap the benefits of co-creating knowledge through industrial PhD projects. This paper investigates the enablers of knowledge dissemination for PhD students in industrial firms. Based on a qualitative case study in Sweden, our study identifies enablers and mechanisms related to individual and organizational actions in the internal knowledge dissemination process. Based on the findings, the paper presents a model that distinguishes between surface and deep knowledge dissemination and elaborates on the symbiotic nature of enablers, with middle management mediating between the individual and organizational levels. The paper enhances research on knowledge dissemination in UIC by specifically addressing industrial PhD students' dissemination of co-created knowledge. The findings inform organizations in managing their expectations, making more informed decisions and improving dissemination conditions for boundary-spanning industrial PhD students in UIC.