Category: Postgrowth

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Artificial Intelligence as Convivial Technology

tl;dr: Artificial Intelligence research needs to focus on enriching people’s relation to each other, empower them to organise their life beyond the market, and assist in the transformation towards sustainability

Technology is never neutral. It transforms the world, our perceptions of it, and our relations towards one another in a fundamental way. Artificial Intelligence (AI) as technology, as a technological paradigm, as specific applications of machine (self-)learning as well as automation of highly cognitive decision routines, raises questions if we should use it, how we should use it, and what happens then.… Read more

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In Search For Meaning: The Real Challenges for the World Economic Forum 2019

tl;dr: Globalization needs new meanings beyond economic growth

This year’s World Economic Forum catchphrase is ”Globalization 4.0“ and focuses on a ”New Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution“. The discussions this year will not be affirmative of new technologies and optimistic about new economic opportunities. Rather a very concerned view on the new global realities dominates, especially but not exclusively:

  • the rise of Neo-Nationalism and the politics of isolation and confrontation, especially in the former globalization heartlands like the USA and UK, but also in emerging countries like Brazil and core European countries like Hungary and Poland;
  • the ongoing and accelerating human-made climate change that requires global cooperation for successful mitigation, not national isolation.
… Read more
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Next Growth: Re-Imagining Growth

tl;dr: Moving beyond growth as a paradigm is vital to unlock a new economy of prosperity, creativity and sustainability – and business has a large role to play 

Successful business = economic growth. This equation appears to be a natural law of economics, despite the many downsides of growth (exploitation, inequalities, ecological degradation) and the economic limitations of growth (secular stagnation, lagging productivity, global demographic change, low to negative interest rates). In fact, in can be argued that we already see the first signs of a postgrowth age, with decelerating global growth rates and possible contractions in many countries in the years and decades ahead.… Read more

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Towards the Next Economy

tl;dr: The Next Economy is signified by Digitalization as a social phenomenon, Postgrowth as economic context, and Sustainability as normative reference frame.

Recently I was provided the opportunity to speak about my research at 12min.me in the co-working/social start-ups incubator Wizeman.Space in Stuttgart. The format is intended to give you 12 minutes of concentrated presentation followed by 12 minutes of discussion (YouTube vid of my talk is available, but only in German). Focusing the past years of research so that they could fit into 12 minutes was a challenge, but it proved to be very productive and inspiring.… Read more

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Management Beyond Growth

Welcome to the Online Community on Degrowth & Postgrowth for Management Scholars.

Since 2011 critical perspectives on the paradigm of economic growth are being discussed at the Academy of Management Annual Meetings in the form of professional development workshops, caucuses and symposia dedicated to Degrowth and Postgrowth. Degrowth, dating back to Serge Latouche and his “word grenade” of décroissance, is a political-economic concept for abandoning the fixation on economic growth as well as a battle cry for a contraction-based society – to think the unthinkable, a world beyond growth.… Read more