Degrowth and Organization Studies

Angelique Slade Shantz, Niki Khorasani, Madeline Toubiana

Organization Studies · 2025 · Volume 46 · Issue 12

Abstract

This essay explores the relevance of degrowth for organization studies, questioning the institutionalization of growth as a taken-for-granted organizational and societal goal. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, we induce four organizing principles—resizing, decelerating tempo, regenerating sufficiency, and governing trade-offs. These principles reveal how organizations can prioritize ecological sustainability and social well-being over perpetual expansion. We emphasize that degrowth is not about shrinking for its own sake, but about rethinking growth as a contingent, context-sensitive outcome rather than a normative imperative. By highlighting practices that operate within, alongside, or against dominant institutions, we show how degrowth organizing provides empirical grounding for post-growth imaginaries. Our aim is to catalyze a broader research program that considers how organizing can unfold differently within the space between a social foundation and an ecological ceiling.

Keywords

degrowth, degrowth organizing, institutional change, post-growth, post-growth organizing, sustainability

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