Planetary crises and post-growth organizing

https://unsplash.com/photos/vbFC9BCo95M

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

How We Win To Save The Climate

tl;dr: Covid-19 shows us that we can change. Now let’s make it work for saving the climate.

We all make new experiences these days. And that “we” is an estimated 1.7 billion strong, around 20 percent of the global population. We spatially distance ourselves and adapt our everyday practices in a grand social experiment on a scale unimaginable only a month ago. Some of these changes might revert back once the Covid-19 pandemic is over, depending on how long it lasts and how long we have to participate in this experiment.… Read more

Moving Beyond Growth: Compendium on Postgrowth Research

tl;dr: Compendium of my research on degrowth, postgrowth and the next economy

The First Decade of Degrowth Research

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

Sustainable and/or Digital? Compendium on Digital Sustainability

tl;dr: Compendium of my research on Sustainability and the Digital Transformation

When Megatrends Collide

Sustainability is the great challenge for humanity in the 21st century: how to organize economic, political, and social systems in a way that planetary boundaries and the viability of global as well as local ecosystems can be maintained for all posterity. It is an inherently political (i.e. contested, conflict-laden) as well as social (i.e. global justice and fairness across generations) question. We are facing this from a position of fundamental un-sustainabilities and are in search for the right path ahead.… Read more

Artificial Intelligence as Convivial Technology

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