Dancing with transitions : a research journey through the transition of work integration social enterprises to the circular economy: a systemic design perspective

Contemporary societal challenges increasingly expose the limitations of existing economic models and call for systemic transitions toward more sustainable and inclusive forms of value creation. While the role of mainstream businesses in sustainability transitions has been widely examined, the position and potential of social economy organisations remain less clearly articulated. Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs) pursue a primary social mission by providing employment for people with a distance from the regular labour market while they operate within competitive market environments and are therefore directly affected by broader economic, technological, and ecological changes. Recent shifts in these domains have led WISEs to explore their role in the green transition and, more specifically, their potential contribution to the circular economy (CE), given their embeddedness in material-intensive value chains. This dissertation investigates how WISEs can participate in, and transition toward the CE in the regional context of Flanders. It adopts an approach that integrates three methodological strands into a research braid: longitudinal action research conducted over five years within a WISE, systemic design-led inquiry, and theoretical and methodological research into the complexity of organisational transitions. The findings show that WISEs are well positioned to participate in the CE. This is already visible in practice in Flanders, but much latent potential still exists. However, unlocking this potential calls for multi-level interventions that address counteracting system dynamics and activate strategic leverage points. Conceptually, framing organisational participation in the CE as a ‘nested transition’ yields greater explanatory power than focusing solely on circular innovation. It opens up different types of problem spaces. Distinguishing between these problem types – and particularly developing capabilities to work with complexity – can help navigate transition paths, especially for WISEs that hold limited innovative and transformative power in their value chains. Last, the research shows that designers have a distinctive role to play when dealing with complexity: they can design ‘boundary objects’ for collective sensemaking, exploring different future scenarios and guiding the alignment of actors in ‘intervention ecologies’. This dissertation contributes to advancing circular societies by articulating the role of social economy actors in socially inclusive and circular value creation. It also explores the development of methodologies for systemic design research to study complex phenomena such as organisational CE transitions.