Sustainability & Postgrowth Research
tl;dr Recapture the concept of growth by reformulating it as ecological growth, containing expansion and contraction, and a clear focus on ecosystem regeneration
A very long time ago, in the autumn of 2022, Liz Truss was briefly Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. One of her big policy announcements was her desire to ignite the forces of growth – by means of government debt and tax cuts, for example in the form of tax-free banker bonuses.… Read more
Earth Day was on 22 April and while searching for a bit of background and resources for this day, I came across the Earth Overshoot Day 2021 contest where you can guess, on what date the impacts of human activities will have exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet’s biosphere this year. Next to the realization that some countries like e.g. Austria did already have their national Earth Overshoot Day (it was 7 April 2021), this got me thinking about the need for speed when it comes to reducing humanity’s footprint on the Earth’s biosphere and ecosystems.… Read more
tl;dr: special issue on key principles for a sustainable future: frugal abundance, conviviality, care, and open relocalization.
Envisioning a post-COVID 19 world where societies and organizations can flourish without growth is one of the most difficult tasks facing scholars from all disciplines. This is especially true for those of us who work in management and organization studies, where the status quo assumption remains fixed on economic growth and profit maximization. Together with my colleagues Bobby Banerjee, John Jermier, Ana Maria Peredo, and Robert Perey, we approached this challenge putting together a special issue with ORGANIZATION (SAGE) on “Theoretical perspectives on organizations and organizing in a post-growth era”.… Read more
tl;dr: Compendium of my research on degrowth, postgrowth and the next economy
For over a decade now I have researched Degrowth or Décroissance from an organizational and business perspective. At the first International Degrowth Conference in Paris in 2008, I was the only management scholar talking about “Economic De-growth as Corporate Competitive Advantage?” (obviously I had taken crazy pills). In 2010 I engaged with Tim Jackson in London on a CEECEC / SERI workshop on “Toward an International Degrowth Network“, continuing with my theme on Degrowth and its implications for the firm.… Read more
tl;dr: Artificial Intelligence research needs to focus on enriching people’s relation to each other, empower them to organise their life beyond the market, and assist in the transformation towards sustainability
Technology is never neutral. It transforms the world, our perceptions of it, and our relations towards one another in a fundamental way. Artificial Intelligence (AI) as technology, as a technological paradigm, as specific applications of machine (self-)learning as well as automation of highly cognitive decision routines, raises questions if we should use it, how we should use it, and what happens then.… Read more