Analysing scholarly impact of cooperatives and SMEs in circular economy and eco-innovation using fuzzy-set methodology

Abstract. The transition to a circular economy (CE) through eco-innovation (EI) is central to addressing global sustainability challenges. Cooperatives and small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) are well positioned to lead this transformation given their unique socio-economic structure and characteristics, as well as their relatively large numbers in certain economic sectors. Building upon prior bibliometric research on cooperatives and SMEs in CE and EI, this study examines scholarly impact and its influence on the CE transition amongst these firm types. The novel question arises on whether or not low scholarly impact may be responsible for the lack of further progress in a transition towards the circular economy.  The research shows that previous scientific literature would not have evolved enough to constitute a true common body of knowledge, instead only consisting of unconnected individual contributions, as observed for cooperative research. This question is important because without such a common body of literature, the existing scientific evidence would only be punctual or anecdotal and would not be systematically discussed. Above all, the absence of such a common body of literature would not be systematically advanced (based on past findings), thus trapping information within the same community, a community which lacks interaction between other variables and disciplines. These limitations could consequentially neither be generalized nor serve as a solid basis for private and public action. Given the state of the CE transition, it might indeed be a problem that the scientific literature has not achieved sufficient scholarly impact. Following a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis, the literature identifies key contributions on the EI-driven CE transition, which are then subjected to Fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) (Castelló-Sirvent, 2022; Rubinson & Ragin, 2025) to evaluate determinants of scholarly impact. The analysis focuses on cooperatives and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — actors crucial to the CE transition which are often overlooked in research. Using fsQCA in two tests, the study investigates combinations of conditions to explain impact using years since publishing (AGE), usage count (UC), sum of the citations achieved by the journal (NIA), the normalised impact per year (NIY), number of authors (OA), count of cited references (CRC), and connection to the triple bottom line (TBL). The results demonstrate that the scholarly impact is limited, especially since neither the cooperative research, the number of authors, and the presence of  TBL seem to lack a noticeable impact. Taken together, the results highlight the existence of research gaps and provide guidance for scholars on how to maximize their impact, ultimately with the aim of better connecting scientific research with real world application, and thereby speeding up up the CE transition successfully.

Keywords: cooperatives, small and medium sized firms (SMEs), circular economy, eco-innovation, scholarly impact