Integrating IT Social Responsibility into Annual Corporate Planning Through Circular Economy Practices: A Systematic Review and Multiple Case Analysis of Ecuadorian Organizations

IT social responsibility (ITSR) projects—e-waste recycling, equipment reuse and donation, digital inclusion—are routinely excluded from annual corporate planning; no study has examined how they can be formalized through circular economy (CE) practices in a Latin American institutional context. This study addresses that gap for Ecuador. A PRISMA 2020-compliant review of 35 peer-reviewed studies (2023–2025) was combined with a qualitative multiple case study of seven organizations—four multinational corporations and three startups—analyzed through thematic content analysis of 23 documents anchored to the R0–R9 ladder, the 60R typology, the ReSOLVE framework, and a dynamic capabilities lens. The review documents a strong corporate social responsibility (CSR)–CE association (β = 0.893, p < 0.001, reported by a PLS-SEM study of 777 Spanish SMEs in the corpus; not estimated here). Multinational programs report quantified circular outputs mapped to R2–R9 strategies, whereas startups display emergent practices without governance for scaling—a difference in seizing and transforming capabilities rather than in sensing. No case reports economic indicators: environmental outcomes are documented and social outcomes partially so, but competitiveness effects remain untested and are advanced as a proposition for future research. Structured governance, public–private coordination, and measurement capability emerge as the mechanisms for embedding these initiatives in annual planning.