This chapter, written for the book Radical Business Perspectives for Sustainability Transitions, explores the contested notion of corporate degrowth, suggesting degrowth intrapreneurship as a way forward. First, the chapter questions the efficacy of corporate sustainability, assessing whether intensifying ESG practices would be a sufficient corporate response to the global poly-crisis, and proffers degrowth as a suitably strong socio-ecological approach. Next, the chapter explores why corporations are of particular importance to degrowth and what degrowth could mean for corporations, while introducing the concept of corporate-degrowth intrapreneurship as a lever for change. A classification of the degrowth business literature across core corporate functional perspectives reveals stark oversight of this lens, offering a promising avenue for scholar-intrapreneur collaboration to build a research agenda. Steering degrowth scholarship and corporate practice toward a shared aim could accelerate degrowth value creation, catalyse corporate transformation and expand support for degrowth in the mainstream.
Image by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash
Heliocene 