607: Exploring Degrowth in Organization Studies: A Multifaceted Lens (16308)

In the last decade, degrowth as an ideology and scholarly construct has emerged to critique growth as a social paradigm and to encourage more sustainable and equitable ways of organizing. Although an increasing number of scholars and activists have engaged with the degrowth idea, the field of organization studies has shown limited interest. On the other hand, over the past several decades, business and organization theorists have put forth a host of ideas around sustainability, such as the triple bottom line and green growth. However, based on empirical facts that question the possibility of decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation (Hickel and Kallis 2020; Parrique et al. 2019), relying on these ideas may not be sufficient. What does this mean for organization and management theories? In this PDW we aim to inspire dialogue on possibilities in the field of organization studies for not only studying degrowth empirically, but also integrating its ethos to defy growth in theories and possibly leveraging existing knowledge for imagining alternative futures. Our objective is to encourage scholars to engage with this concept by offering multiple perspectives, through inviting highly esteemed scholars to share their thoughts. We hope to stimulate both conceptual and empirical research that critiques the taken-for-grantedness of growth at economic, organizational, and individual levels in theory and practice. The final part of the PDW will be allocated to the discussion of participants’ submissions in roundtables with the panelists.

Attendees can send a 500 word abstract to nikikhor@ualberta.ca. Submission is not mandatory for participation. Selected abstracts will be discussed in breakout groups as part of the PDW. To manage time, we will have to select a limitted number of abstracts for the group discussions.