Digital technologies and circular economy in supply chain management: in the era of COVID-19 pandemic

This empirical study aims to identify the importance of Digital Technologies (DT) as an enabler in the Circular Economy (C.E.) based business model, especially during Covid-19. The concept of 'circular economy' has now been advocated as a methodology to stimulate economic growth in line with the environmental sustainability. Hence, the practices of recycling, reduction, reuse/re-manufacture, and repairing (4R's) are deemed to be the core of a circular economy. Recently, the advent of the pandemic Covid-19 has forced the nations of the world to resort to alternate resource use in their manufacturing and trading of goods and services as the supply chains have almost remained disrupted since Covid-19 appeared. We investigate the impacts of Covid-19 upon the use of technological innovation (T.I.), circular economy practices (CEP), and organizational performance (ORP) incorporating the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Our results show that Covid-19 significantly impacted the adoption of technological innovation, circular economy, which leads toward organizational performance. Moreover, the practices and operations under the circular economy framework also appear to influence organizational performance significantly. Our study findings bring forward meaningful insights into improving CEF-cum-technology based practices in developing and emerging markets in Asia, and convey significant implications for the business community, policymakers, and researchers.