Corporate Social Responsibility and Circular Economy as a New Integrated Approach?

Abstract

Scholars and managers pay constantly their attention on Circular Economy (CE) as it constitutes an innovative lever for achieving economic, social and environmental sustainability. For decades, companies have used the common pillar of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to enhance the sustainability approach. Although CSR is a broad and longstanding concept, how CSR and the recent concept of CE might be related has been overlooked up until now. The paper has the objective to analyse how, under the stakeholder theory, CSR might favor the emergence of CE. The analysis has been conducted in the Agribusiness sector as a relevant context because it is technologically dynamic and requires paying attention to all the stakeholders. We used a qualitative approach and the results of the research highlight that companies adopting CSR models are oriented towards circularity. This research contributes to a better scientific understanding of the impact of CSR on CE, and provides useful indications to managers to favor the two approaches and benefit all the stakeholders.