Reminder Call for chapters Sufficiency in Business

[Niessen, Laura (MSI)]

Dear SCORAI members,

 

Here a short reminder for our call for chapters, with an abstracts deadline of January 31, 2023.

 

We welcome contributions to an Open Access book addressing “Sufficiency in Business”. Chapter contributions are warmly welcomed and you can suggest one by submitting a short abstract via this form.

 

Please forward this call to colleagues for whom it might be of interest.

 

For any queries or comments, please feel free to contact maike....@tu-berlin.de.

 

Kind wishes,

Maike Gossen & Laura Niessen

 

 

**Call for Chapters**

Open Access Book

 

Abstract submissions open November 1, 2022 and due by January 31, 2023

Intended publisher: transcript (to be confirmed after hand-in of suggested content)

 

Sufficiency in Businesses 

 

This book will focus on sufficiency in businesses. The editors hereby invite the growing research community on sufficiency-oriented business models and corporate strategies to submit chapters and to share their theoretical and empirical insights, as well as their reflections, experiences, and opinions.

 

Background

The need for sufficiency as a framework to complement the sustainability strategies of efficiency and consistency is increasingly recognized in science, politics and society. This requires far-reaching changes in social practices and collective behavioral changes. So far, the adoption and promotion of sufficiency by companies has only been sporadically addressed in the sustainability discourse and practical experiences from companies and organizations are still rare. 

 

Sufficiency-oriented business models are based on a modified understanding of value creation and thus a paradigm shift in business logic. They are not – as is usually the case – mainly concerned with maximizing profits, but rather with ensuring that all business activities contribute to sufficiency by (i) promoting sufficiency-oriented lifestyles and (ii) limiting resource consumption and production volume in the company (Jungell-Michelsson & Heikkurinen, 2022). 

 

Not only in practice but also in research, understanding sufficiency strategies of companies is still in its infancy. Prior research positioned sufficiency as an indispensable component of the circular economy (Bocken et al., 2022), developed a framework for sufficiency-oriented business strategies (Niessen & Bocken, 2021), examined how value is created in sufficiency-oriented companies (Kropfeld & Reichel, 2021) and how sufficiency changes business practices(Beyeler & Jaeger-Erben, 2022), and identified marketing strategies for promoting sufficiency-oriented consumption (Gossen et al., 2019; Gossen & Kropfeld, 2022). Other research has been devoted to sufficiency strategies in specific sectors such as housing, clothing, and food, or to connections between sufficiency and circular economy business models.

 

Aims and scope

The book aims to contribute to the conceptualization of sufficiency in businesses as well as the empirical investigation of practical examples. This can extend to research on companies devoted to related concepts such as degrowth or non-growing companies, other organizational forms such as non-governmental organizations, energy cooperatives, purpose organizations, or common good economy, and studies from different sectors such as housing, mobility, food, or consumer goods. Another possible focal topic can be sufficiency-oriented businesses in the circular economy. We invite contributions that suggest practical paths for companies and other organizations to adopt sufficiency-oriented efforts, as well as contributions that highlight policy approaches to effectively support those efforts. The consumer perspective on sufficiency-oriented businesses, e.g. the perception and acceptance of sufficiency-promoting initiatives, also lies within the scope of the book.

While we accept submissions of work that has been published previously, we ask for a comprehensive revision, e.g. taking a different research angle or analyzing new empirical data. In case you plan to submit published work, inquire about the requirements of the copyright-holder of the original work.

Important dates (subject to change)

·       31th January 2023: Deadline for submission of abstracts (500 to 750 words) via this online form 

·       1st March 2023: Invitation for full chapter submission 

·       31th June 2023: Deadline for submission of full chapters (6000-8000 words) per email to Maike Gossen (maike....@tu-berlin.de) 

·       30th August 2023: Communication on recommended revisions to authors

·       End of September 2023: Deadline for final manuscripts 

·       Until end of the year 2023: Publication of book

 

The editors are Dr. Maike Gossen (TU Berlin) and Laura Niessen (Maastricht University).

For any queries related to the call for chapters, please contact Maike Gossen at maike....@tu-berlin.de.