Employing a qualitative cross-national comparison, this paper examines the changing roles and activities of biopharmaceutical industry associations in the development of the South African and Indian pharmaceutical industries, with a particular focus on government-industry relations. In contrast, this paper builds upon more recent work that places industry associations as key intermediary actors that facilitate knowledge exchange and institutional capacity building, particularly in the context of developing countries where limited institutional capacities and substantial knowledge gaps can limit both innovation and development. As such, industry associations have long been excluded from discussions regarding the relational dynamics and evolution of innovation systems. In most cases, while such activities are deemed essential from an industry perspective, they also carry negative connotations connected to narrow rent-seeking and the pursuit of elites' interests which run counter to the public good and discourage competition and subsequent innovation. The role of industry associations in shaping policy through various lobbying activities is well established. This long-term analysis is valuable in novel topics such as CE. The study also demonstrated the organizations’ evolution and the improved perception of economic benefits and reduced barriers to implementing CE. Likewise, BAs’ potential to promote the closure of energy and materials cycles in regions and commercial sectors such as agribusiness is demonstrated. Finally, this study proposes a methodology to promote the CE through the BAs, based on the performance of the UCAN as an intermediary of the CE and IS. As a result, an original serious game was developed in 2016 and a survey in 20, which considers the CE’s six fields of action (take, make, manufacture, distribution, use, recovery, and IS). Researchers collected this study’s data through a focus group and surveys. Thus, this work takes the form of an exploratory case study of five different companies of the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Navarra (UCAN) in Spain. This study aims to show the BA’s role as intermediaries of CE and promoters of industrial symbiosis (IS) as a value creation strategy among its affiliated companies (AC). They bring together many companies, generate trust-based relationships, support companies’ strategy and collaborative innovation to construct closed-loop material flows, and increase competitiveness in sectors and regions. In this sense, business associations (BAs) can work as intermediaries to promote CE in industrial sectors. The circular economy (CE) is an alternative economic system based on closing energy and material cycles to achieve sustainable development and create value based on innovation.
Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. Besides, it describes which venues Nokia selected for lobbying, and illustrates the dependency of the Commission on companies and interest groups as sources of information. As a result, it highlights how industry associations, Nokia and some other major companies thoroughly reformulated the proposal using issue based strategies. The paper is based on a combination of different data collection methods and it covers approximately the period from spring 2000 to July 2003. Thus, it contributes to the discussion on the role of business in public policy. The main aim is to inquire how a multinational Finnish corporation, Nokia, and related industry associations anticipated legislation under preparation and how they tried to influence the preparation process. This article sheds light on the interaction between the European Commission and different stakeholders via an illustrative example, the preparation of a proposal for what is known as the EuP directive.