Degrowth, Depth and Hope in Sustainable Business: Reflections from Denmark, Finland and Sweden

This book takes degrowth theorising in the direction of honouring collaboration, creating new dialogues and emphasising growth and human capacities.

Traditionally, degrowth theorising has focussed on reduction and non-growth. While the ecological concerns of degrowth scholarship are felt acutely by many, the suggestion of ＂less＂ can be experienced as undesirable, going against who we are as humans, and even be false in some industries and spaces. Indeed, for a degrowth society to come into being, unprecedented (though not materialistic) growth is needed. This book unpicks the business and sustainability framework rooted in degrowth scholarship and proposes a gentler approach to business for a sustainable society living harmoniously with nature. Drawing on case studies from Finland, Sweden and Denmark, Iana Nesterova reflects on how degrowth manifests in imperfect and nuanced ways and examines the ways in which businesses navigate creatively and cautiously challenging socio-economic landscapes, and why they do this. She puts forward a new framework for growth within degrowth, centred around humanism and hope, which celebrates empathy, care, solidarity and connectedness with human and non-human others and nature.

Presenting an empowering and liberating view on sustainable business, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of business ethics, ecological economics, business organisation and management.

Iana Nesterova is a researcher at Roskilde University, Denmark, and a long-term practitioner of voluntary simplicity. Her research on business and degrowth transformations has been published in the leading journals in the field of sustainable organisations, including Ecological Economics, Journal of Cleaner Production and Futures.