Corporate social responsibility as a road towards circular economy models

The research analyses how the strategic lever of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can encourage Circular Economy (CE) practices with benefits for all the stakeholders. CSR can be defined as the strategic orientation of organization to implement socially and environmentally responsible actions while still pursuing economic goals. CE contributes to harmonizing both the economic growth and environmental protection current ambition of organizations and whole society. While many authors have taken an interest in the CSR and CE as two independent phenomena, there is a lack of understanding about how the two areas could be linked. We contribute to analyze how this happens in the agri-food sector to enlighten scholars and managers towards a more spread implementation of CE. The study has been conducted taking into consideration eight Italian companies that adopt CSR practices. Under the lens of stakeholders’ theory, we have adopted an exploratory, qualitative research design. The sustainability reports of each company were analyzed and referred to the 9R model of CE to interpret the circularity orientation of the single organizations. From the analysis of results, it is possible to see that CSR is able to favour the adoption of CE practices. The study contributes to the scientific understanding of CSR and CE and provide managers first indications about how to leverage CSR to achieve CE and benefit the three pillars of sustainability, i.e. economic, social and environmental.