Regenerative Business Between Normative Ambition and Managerial Practice: A Systematic Review Through the Integrated Management Model

ABSTRACT

As the regenerative rhetoric spreads across research and practice, management literature remains fragmented, with no coherent account of how regenerative principles are defined, governed, and enacted at the organizational level. This systematic literature review synthesizes 36 peer‐reviewed articles (2017–2025) through the lens of the Integrated Management Model, structuring regenerative business along normative, strategic, and operational levels. The analysis shows that the field's coherence is unevenly distributed: it converges on a shared normative core of ecological worldview, systemic purpose, and net positive contribution to socio‐ecological systems, while the strategic mechanisms and measurement systems that would translate that core into practice remain comparatively undeveloped. Regenerative business thus emerges less as an accomplished paradigm shift than as a discourse defined by the shift it pursues. We identify central tensions and propose a research agenda to close the distance between its normative ambition and its managerial means.