Untangling Companies' Engagement With Biodiversity: A Systematic Literature Review and Research Agenda

The current rapid and massive biodiversity decline the world is experiencing poses serious threats to the health of natural ecosystems and their ability to provide the services that the socioeconomic system relies on. Organizations are key players in this dynamic, as they have a significant impact on biodiversity while also heavily depending on it. Recently, there has been increased attention and effort in the management literature to understand how companies can manage biodiversity. However, there has been no comprehensive analysis of this strand of literature that synthesizes and elaborates how corporate strategies toward biodiversity are shaped. To fill this gap, the purpose of the paper is to organize the existing literature through a conceptual framework that provides a representation of the mechanisms underlying companies' strategizing process in relation to biodiversity. A systematic review of 151 papers reveals that corporate biodiversity management strategies can take on different systemic traits and regenerative scopes depending on companies' understanding and internalization of their impact–dependence relationship with nature. Moreover, we show how the organizational field can influence such understanding and stimulate or inhibit the conversion of a systems perspective into a coherent biodiversity management strategy. Beyond providing conceptual ground on how companies engage with biodiversity at the strategic level, we outline future research avenues, while also developing recommendations for further theory development.