Abstract
Research has attempted to develop tools to measure the level of Circular Economy (CE) in
organizations taking a holistic perspective. Despite the existence of different tools, research
has not yet critically investigated their effectiveness. This work intends to fill this gap by
exploring existing CE tools at the micro-level and identifying potential improvement areas.
Based on a review of the tools, the four most appropriate were selected, and semi-structured
interviews were conducted with six Italian SMEs from the manufacturing context. The results
have shown that tools can be improved especially in terms of the quality principles of
transferability, confirmability, fit/understanding and generality. Accordingly, suggestions to
revise the CE assessment tools are proposed and their holistic applicability is discussed.
By comparing and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of existing CE assessment tools,
we have shed light on this still underdeveloped topic, which is of interest to both academics
and practitioners.