Mapping Activities and Skills of the Industrial Symbiosis Facilitator Role: A Systematic Literature Review

While research on emergence and facilitation of IS is plenty, a holistic description of facilitator actions, let alone skills, is missing. Therefore, a systematic literature review (Snyder, 2019) was conducted, taking departure in a Web of Science search with the search string (“orchestrat*” or “facilitat*”) and “industrial symbiosis”, covering articles in English language. From the resulting 124 articles, those were selected that 1) view the facilitator as an (inter-)organizational phenomenon and present insights on actions and skills of a facilitating entity and 2) were based on an analysis of empirical data, leaving a remainder of 20 articles. While reviewing articles for these two criteria, it was checked if they refer to other potentially relevant sources. Through this backward snowballing, 7 additional articles were identified. From this final list of 27 articles, 156 quotes referring to actions and skills of the IS facilitator were extracted. An inductive grouping and analysis of these quotes pointed at five main types of tasks and related activities and skills.