Leveraging intellectual capital for building a supply chain circular economy system: A knowledge-based view

Organizations are inevitably pursuing circular economy goals through a supply chain approach. This paper examines the impact of intellectual capital on supply chain circular economy (SCCE) systems made up of a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) and a reverse omnichannel. By employing the knowledge-based view, this paper constructed the relationship between intellectual capital and SCCE systems. We tested the proposed hypotheses by employing structural equation modeling on a dataset collected from 193 Chinese manufacturing firms. Finally, we used a bootstrap method and tested the indirect effect of intellectual capital components on SCCE systems. We found that intellectual capital both directly and indirectly contributed to SCCE systems. Human capital and structural capital, in particular, were positively associated with CLSC, whereas social capital was strongly related to reverse omnichannel. However, human capital and structural capital had no significant relationship with reverse omnichannel, and social capital had no significant impact on CLSC. We also found that structural capital mediated the human capital-CLSC association, and social capital played a mediating role between human capital and reverse omnichannel. Drawing on the knowledge-based view, our study offers insights into the intellectual capital literature, circular economy literature, and supply chain management literature. The findings add to our existing understanding of how existing knowledge of the organization can be leveraged for better operations by CLSC and improved services by reverse omnichannel.