Circular economy practices and corporate social responsibility performance: the role of sense-giving

The circular economy (CE) has recently emerged as an innovative business model for firms to transform corporate social responsibility (CSR) into actions. Existing research tends to examine the CSR advantages of short-term CE practice adoptions, remaining silent on the benefits and drivers of their long-term implementation. This study fills the gaps by investigating the impact of the long-term adoption of eco-design (ECO) and reverse logistic (RL) practices on firm CSR performance and exploring the moderating roles of four sense-giving activities. Using a balanced panel dataset of 132 manufacturing public firms in China and a fixed-effects model, we find that: 1) the frequency of ECO and RL practice adoptions significantly improves firm CSR performance; 2) goal setting for CE performance, CE education and training, and employee feedback on CE practices positively moderate the RL-CSR relationship, while employee feedback on CE practices positively moderates the ECO-CSR relationship. This study has significant implications for both research and practice in the increasingly important domains of CE and CSR management.