Naming the Integration Gap: A Decade of E-Waste Circular Economy Research and the Cross-Channel Coordination Failure It Missed

Abstract

Abstract - Formal e-waste collection in Indonesia has stayed below five percent of national generation for nearly two decades, whereas the circular economy literature addressing that persistence spans barely a decade and has mostly studied households rather than the operators moving the material. A systematic literature review of 117 peer-reviewed papers (2016 to February 2026), screened under PRISMA 2020 guidelines and specified through the CIMO framework, identifies three compounding gaps. Theoretically, supply chain language appears in 88 of the 117 papers yet rarely functions as a coordination lens, and no paper applies Behavioural Operations Management at the operator level. Empirically, most studies assume developed-country baselines, and where developing-country informal dominance is documented, its persistence goes unexplained. Methodologically, single-method designs cannot diagnose a binding constraint, trace its origin, and project its shift all at once, a capacity System Dynamics offers but which appears in only five papers. None of eleven prior reviews, and no paper within this corpus, combines a supply chain coordination lens with an operator-level behavioural account inside a developing-country frame. This review names that integration gap and cautions that policies built on enforcement or household awareness are aimed at the wrong actor.

 Keywords - e-waste, reverse supply chain, circular economy, behavioural operations management, supply chain coordination, developing countries