Navigation of the Growth Imperative in Sufficiency-Oriented Businesses

Sammanfattning

This research explores how sufficiency-oriented businesses navigate the growth imperative within the prevailing growth-oriented economic system. Through 16 semi-structured interviews with 14 sufficiency-oriented businesses, this study examines how they experience growth pressures, which coping strategies they employ and which systemic barriers they encounter to applying sufficiency in the market. The findings reveal that the growth imperative is primarily experienced as financial pressure linked to market competition and economic viability. Rather than simply rejecting growth, businesses actively negotiate it through three central mechanisms: reshaping growth into selective or impact-oriented forms; redefining business paradigms by prioritising sustainability-oriented values over purely financial indicators; and adapting internal structures and networks to enhance autonomy and pursue long-term partnerships. The research demonstrates that navigating the growth imperative is an ongoing process of balancing ecological ambitions with economic realities. However, firm-level strategies remain constrained by broader systemic conditions, such as market logics and institutional structures, suggesting that organisational adaptation alone is insufficient for a full sustainability transformation. A limitation of this research is the conceptual blurring between original tensions and normalised coping strategies, which complicates the analytical distinction between the two. Future research should investigate systemic leverage points to create a supportive environment for sufficiency-oriented businesses.