After returning from the 6th Lifecycle Management Conference in Gothenburg, where I delivered one of the keynotes dedicated to “Sustainability Beyond Growth”, I noticed that some of the talks and topics really stuck with me. Especially two presentations remain notable. One was from Danone and their new tools for calculating their Carbon Footprint in the supply chain. With their yoghurts they can now see perfectly clear that the “original producers” aka “the cows” are responsible for most of it.… Read more
Degrowth capitalism — Oxymoron or blind spot?
In the persistent controversy over the necessity and possibility of ongoing economic growth for ecological sustainability and societal well-being, growth critics gather around Serge Latouche’s décroissance — degrowth. Being sort of a degrowth economist myself, I started to wonder about something you might wish to call “degrowth capitalism”. Having my disciplinary background in management science, it always appeared to me as a strange blind spot in the degrowth debate. The level of the firm is all too easily neglected, with the minor exceptions of social entrepreneurship.… Read more
Management’s undecidable questions and its trivial answers?
After participating in this year’s Academy of Management Annual Meeting in San Antonio, the planet’s largest professional body of management scholars, I gained some puzzling insights to the profound problems of the field. Of course this is mainly due to my distorted worldview I inherit from Heinz von Foerster, Francisco Varela and Niklas Luhmann. However it might be just as valid as any other, and maybe even more so as it stems from a kind of reasoning that embraces paradox rather than run away from it.… Read more
17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference
It is the final day of the 17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference in New York City and I am trying to get the mixed soup in my head together. The first day was really a shock, as Nina Fedoroff was seriously advocating genetic modified organisms as the future hope for sustainable agriculture. In a similar, although more balanced vein, Klaus Lackner argued for clean energy. Now that might at first not look like a bad thing, and I would surely love to see heavy investment in it.… Read more
Economy without Growth
Again I am returning home from a conference, this time hosted by the German Association for Ecological Economics (Vereinigung für Ökologische Ökonomie VÖÖ) in Freiburg. The general theme was dedicated to an economy without growth (Wirtschaft ohne Wachstum). The conference was organized as an extended workshop, with an input keynote by Peter Finke and Niko Paech, a World Café do gather comments on the input, and an Open Space with six corners with different topics. I co-hosted a corner with Susanne Hartard on Innovation and Business.… Read more