One of the most interesting divides in the sustainability field is around degrowth. The idea of degrowth is hard for many business people to embrace. I must confess, as you will see, I find that the logic of the degrowth people often eludes me. As such, I was interested to see what Christopher Marquis had…
Search Results for: degrowth
Q&A On Sustainable Business
What Is Sustainability? The most common definition is from a United Nations report, (Our Common Future, the Brundtland Report from 1987). This informally defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/sustainability). Is Sustainable Just Green? Note that the idea of meeting…
Sustainable Business Reading List
Here is a Sustainable Business Reading List which covers books in sustainability and the sustainable business field. Note I am not recommending all these. Some of them I don’t like at all. (You will pick this up if you follow the links to my commentaries). Still, reading them helps give an idea of what discussions…
Are We Making Any Progress On Sustainability?
I recently discussed Christopher Marquis’s HBR article “In Defense of Degrowth”, see here. As seems to happen in work from a degrowth perspective, Marquis’ article spent some time implying that we aren’t making any progress on sustainability. It was pretty depressing stuff. The idea seems to be that to motivate radical change we need to…
Working In the Doughnut
Kate Raworth has a popular book on sustainability and economics. In it, she argues that economics needs an overhaul. It is an admirably ambitious book with some flaws but with excellent parts to more than makeup for them. What does Raworth say about working in the doughnut? How To Understand Working In the Doughnut Raworth…
Messaging About Sustainability
Jason Hickel wants a fundamentally changed world which he discusses in Less is More. Other posts have noted technical and historical challenges in his work. For this post let us consider how Hickel thinks his ideas can be implemented. What is his messaging about sustainability? For the sake of argument let’s assume that you think…
Sustainability And Grand Historical Sweeps
One way of arguing for the value of sustainability is to suggest that we (humans, westerners, whatever) have declined from a past that was more in touch with nature. Jason Hickel does this by combining ideas about sustainability and grand historical sweeps. History Is Very Much In The Past This isn’t the approach I would…
Modern Business And Sustainability
I was disappointed by Jason Hickel’s Less Is More. I had a number of concerns that fit under three headings, lack of economic/business understanding, lack of historical understanding, and divorce from political reality. Today I’ll discuss the technical business elements of my complaint about Hickel’s book. Let us discuss modern business and sustainability Modern Business…
