Emerging Regenerative Business Paradigm: Narrative Review, Synthesis, and Research Agenda

Kirsi Salonen, Paavo Ritala, Nancy Bocken

This study examines the concept of regenerative business strategy. Regeneration is an emerging approach where businesses aim to create a positive impact on socio-ecological systems, rather than just making incremental improvements or minimizing harm. Our study demonstrates that regeneration is a relatively ambiguous and contested concept – both academically and in practice – with no consensus on its meaning. To make sense of this emerging concept, we employ a narrative review method to anchor regeneration into existing management literature, using the more established concepts of business sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and circular economy. This approach shows that while the concept of regeneration is not entirely new, it offers a new operationalization of systemic and strong sustainability. In summary, our study provides a clear positioning of regenerative business strategy as a part of existing sustainability discourses and demonstrates how it extends and refines those.