Artificial Intelligence Adoption, CSR, Green Finance, and Circular Economy Implementation: A Natural-Resource-Based View of Sustainable Industrial Transformation
Keywords:
Artificial Intelligence, Circular Economy, CSR, Green Finance, Green Product Innovation, Green Supply Chain Management, Natural-Resource-Based ViewAbstract
Circular economy implementation has become a strategic priority for firms seeking to reduce resource dependence, minimize waste, improve environmental performance, and respond to stakeholder pressure for sustainable industrial transformation. Although artificial intelligence, corporate social responsibility, green finance, green product innovation, and green supply chain management have been examined in recent sustainability literature, their theoretical interconnections remain insufficiently integrated. This paper develops a conceptual framework explaining how artificial intelligence adoption, CSR orientation, and green finance jointly facilitate circular economy implementation through green product innovation and green supply chain management. Drawing on the natural-resource-based view, stakeholder theory, dynamic capabilities theory, and institutional theory, the paper argues that circular economy implementation requires the simultaneous development of technological intelligence, stakeholder responsiveness, financial capacity, and organizational reconfiguration. Artificial intelligence enables firms to monitor material flows, predict waste, improve resource efficiency, and support circular decision-making. CSR provides the normative and stakeholder-driven motivation for environmental responsibility, while green finance supplies the financial resources required for investment in circular technologies, product redesign, cleaner production, and reverse logistics. Green product innovation and green supply chain management are proposed as mediating mechanisms that translate technological, social, and financial drivers into circular economy practices. The framework also highlights the roles of access to finance, environmental governance, digital capability, and human capital as enabling conditions. The paper contributes to circular economy and sustainability management literature by integrating technology, finance, governance, and organizational capability perspectives into a unified theoretical model. It offers propositions for future empirical testing in manufacturing, SMEs, high-emission industries, textile, steel, semiconductor, and emerging economy contexts.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Abimbola Serifat Oreoluwa, Stephen Alaba John, Grace Chioma Ofremu
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