This editorial was designed to summarize the contents and key theoretical aspects highlighted in this Special Volume (SV) on “Industry 4.0, Cleaner Production and Circular Economy: An Agenda for Ethical Business Development”. The authors briefly reviewed the concepts of Industry 4.0 (I4.0), Cleaner Production (CP) and Circular Economy (CE) that provide the basic foundation for this SV. A summary of the key theoretical themes, which guided and motivated the authors to submit their articles the SV was presented next. The editorial highlights the main outcomes of the selected papers in the SV. Twenty-one papers were selected that are grouped in five categories. The categories are- I4.0 application based, approaches, decision-support based tools, policy-based research, empirical investigations, and procedural synergies from integrated implementation of I4.0 and CE concepts and approaches. In the context of these categories, the ‘decision-based category’ was the most frequently represented in the submitted papers. Because the systematic integration of I4.0 tools and approaches with CE, and CP is still in a nascent stage, the contributions of this SV will certainly be helpful for industry, academicians and society. One very interesting aspect of this SV were the contributions, based on the actual benefits of integrated implementation of I4.0 for CE and CP. There is a huge gap and lack of such applications based research in the literature which this SV highlights in several ways. Finally, the main theoretical dimensions and the practical approaches adopted by the SV's authors are reviewed. This editorial was concluded with a summary of the corporate managerial implications presented in the papers of this SV.

本社论旨在总结“工业 4.0、清洁生产和循环经济：商业道德发展议程”特刊 (SV) 中强调的内容和关键理论方面。作者简要回顾了工业 4.0 (I4.0)、清洁生产 (CP) 和循环经济 (CE) 的概念，这些概念为本 SV 提供了基础。接下来介绍了指导和激励作者提交他们的文章的关键理论主题的摘要。社论重点介绍了 SV 中所选论文的主要成果。选择了 21 篇论文，分为五个类别。类别是 - 基于 I4.0 应用程序、方法、基于决策支持的工具、基于政策的研究、实证调查、以及来自 I4.0 和 CE 概念和方法的综合实施的程序协同作用。在这些类别的背景下，“基于决策的类别”在提交的论文中最常出现。由于 I4.0 工具和方法与 CE、CP 的系统集成仍处于起步阶段，因此本 SV 的贡献肯定会对行业、学术界和社会有所帮助。这个 SV 的一个非常有趣的方面是贡献，基于对 CE 和 CP 的 I4.0 集成实施的实际好处。文献中存在巨大的空白和缺乏基于应用的研究，该 SV 以多种方式强调了这一点。最后，回顾了 SV 作者采用的主要理论维度和实践方法。