Recover Project

Business activities play an important role in the ongoing degradation of the health of Earths ecosystems. An ecological transition calls for adopting a systems perspective to rethink business practices as if sustainability really mattered.

In this project, we study the nascent development and adoption of regenerative business practices, i.e., business practices that enhance, and thrive through the health of social-ecological systems (SES) in a co-evolutionary process.

In stark contrast to established approaches to business sustainability, regenerative business takes the health of social-ecological systems as the reference point. Because of its reference to the surrounding SES as a starting point, the process of the enactment of regenerative practices in business organizations is fundamentally different from conventional business practices that take the organization as a starting point. This process of the enactment of regenerative practices in business organizations is not well understood. A better understanding of this process can be achieved by studying nascent regenerative business practices as well as the boundary conditions of regenerative business in terms of systemic, institutional, and organizational factors to understand the conditions under which firms adopt regenerative strategies.

Based on the concepts of social-ecological systems and polycentric governance, also a multi-level concept with a nested nature as SES, we conduct a qualitative study with two streams in the context of regenerative agriculture in Spain:

• In the first stream, a longitudinal process study, we analyze the collaborative efforts of multiple actors to develop and establish regenerative agricultural business practices. This stream will offer insights into the collaborative dynamics within and across multiple organizations and actors that lead to the development of adaptive and regenerative practices.
• In a second stream, a policy study, we address the regulatory boundary conditions of the adoption of regenerative business practices. Following a polycentric governance approach, we will analyze regulatory efforts to foster regenerative agriculture at different levels (regional, national, supranational) and through different governance approaches (private as well as public governance).

The project will generate insightful and valuable knowledge for academics, practitioners, and policy makers regarding the collaborative dynamics, as well as governance and regulatory frameworks, in which the nascent regenerative business practices emerge. Most importantly, the project will generate a better understanding of the collaborative practices and governance frameworks that are likely to lead into systems-oriented, and therefore more sustainable, regenerative business practices in agriculture and beyond.

Project TED2021-132909B-I00