organizations and the natural environment. Hence, for this special issue, we invite scholars to reflect on how economic growth is conceptualized (implicitly or explicitly) in existing theoretical frameworks and in the paradigmatic underpinnings (often functionalist) of these frameworks. Relatedly, we think it is essential to reimagine organizations and their impacts under macro-economic conditions characterized by decoupling of resources, steady-state
system dynamics, or even conscious degrowth1—which requires a radical paradigm shift and other fundamental changes that can elevate human happiness, well-being, quality of life and other non-economic criteria from the periphery to the center of organizational analysis.
Critiques of unbridled economic growth are not new. The radical notion of degrowth, (décroissance--meaning economic contraction or downscaling—Latouche, 2004), however, presents organizational and management scholars with a paradigmatic challenge and with opportunities to reframe the field and its core set of assumptions. Degrowth is not a particular theory as such but can be described as mot obus, a ‘word grenade’ or ‘missile word’ that aims to create new visions of social, ecological and economic transformations; it is ‘a political slogan with theoretical implications’ (Latouche, 2009: 7). Degrowth authors challenge institutions that frame the economic, political and cultural dimensions of capitalism and neoliberalism, arguing that our current institutions have created the social-ecological crises we now face. Degrowth thinkers question the ongoing relevance of these institutions and
their effects in their current (and incrementally reformed) configurations. For example, advocates of degrowth challenge the assumptions of green growth and sustainable development and argue that it is not possible to decouple economic growth from material and energy flows.
In ecological economics, degrowth is described as an ‘equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human wellbeing and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long term’ (Schneider et al., 2010: 513). However, degrowth is not just about producing or consuming less but also involves a repoliticalization of the economy and a radical break from conventional economic thinking because growth economies and societies do not know how to degrow (Fournier, 2008; Latouche 2004). Degrowth distinguishes well-being and prosperity from economic growth and aims to promote economic democracy and social justice and a ‘concern for a fair distribution (intergenerational and intragenerational) of economic, social and environmental goods and bads at all time-lines’ (Demaria et al., 2013: 202). Degrowth is not the same as austerity, which is a neoliberal project. In fact, as Chertkovskaya et al. (2017: 200) point out ‘arguments for austerity are always made in the name of growth’. More radical concepts related to degrowth include sharing, simplicity, conviviality, care, the commons, new forms of cooperatives, production for use, voluntary rather than wage labor, gifts/barter rather than profit (D’Alisa et al., 2015; Fournier, 2009). The emphasis is not on ‘less’ but ‘different’: ‘different activities, different forms and uses of energy, different relations, different gender roles, different allocations of time between paid and non-paid work and different relations with the non-human world’ (D’Alisa et al., 2015: 4).
Critiques of growth that emerged in mainly European contexts are also closely related to critiques of development in Latin America and Asia. Advocates of ‘post-development’ call for alternatives to development rather than development alternatives and the need to decenter development as a central discourse that represented reality for much of the global south (Escobar, 2011; 2015; Esteva et al., 2013; Sachs, 1992). Alternatives include movements like Buen Vivir (Gudynas, 2011; Kothari et al., 2015; Peredo, 2018), which emerged from
1 The epistemic dominance of the term growth is also reflected in our language – in typing ‘degrowth’ the automatic spellchecker corrected it to ‘regrowth’.