The Many Faces of Business Localness: Systematic Review and Integrative Framework Incorporating Economic Embeddedness

This study presents a systematic review of the literature on business localness, a concept which, despite increasing interest, remains theoretically fragmented. This fragmentation limits a comprehensive understanding of how firms are embedded in local economies and how localness can be systematically measured. Using the PRISMA methodology, 54 articles were analyzed from an initial set of 500 publications in the Scopus database. Combining bibliometric clustering and qualitative synthesis, the study identifies seven major research clusters and organizes them into broader research streams. The findings suggest that localness is primarily examined in terms of its relational, spatial and economic dimensions. Mechanisms such as knowledge diffusion, trust and access to resources are emphasized, as are outcomes relating to innovation, business performance, sustainability and regional development. However, the economic dimension remains fragmented and is rarely conceptualized as a distinct and measurable component of business localness. Combining findings from previously fragmented research streams, this study develops an integrative framework for business localness that incorporates spatial, relational, and economic dimensions of embeddedness and links them to the mechanisms and outcomes through which firms contribute to local economies. The study is limited by its reliance on English-language journal articles indexed in Scopus and by the conceptual nature of the proposed framework, which requires further empirical validation across different contexts and industries. By explicitly introducing economic embeddedness as a distinct analytical dimension, the framework extends existing embeddedness theory and provides a foundation for future empirical research on how firms contribute to local economic development and sustainability.