Strategies for Legitimizing Regeneration in Supply Chain Fields

Abstract

In view of escalating environmental degradation, regenerative business has been proposed to restore social–ecological systems. However, as regeneration fundamentally departs from mainstream approaches and lacks commonly accepted standards, it suffers from a liability of newness that hampers its broader legitimation and adoption. While prior research has studied legitimation strategies for individual organizations, less is known about how legitimacy is built in supply chains—a necessary condition given the systemic aspiration of regeneration. This paper explores the legitimation strategies used by pioneering regenerative producers to legitimize regeneration in supply chain fields. Drawing upon case studies of regenerative farmers in Spain, this study identifies six legitimation strategies, aiming at (i) consolidating the regenerative agrifood supply chain field or (ii) connecting it to wider agrifood supply chain fields. Contributing to the emergent literature on regenerative supply chains, the study explains how producers seek to legitimize regeneration in nested supply chain fields by unpacking their adaptive and systemic approaches targeted at different actors in the narrow regenerative agrifood supply chain field and the wider agrifood supply chain field.