Alternative Organising and Degrowth: Countering Capitalist Polycrisis and Organising Liveable Worlds

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Lund University, Sweden
Fabian Maier, Université Paris-Dauphine-PSL, France
Andreas Wittel, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Marek Korczynski, University of Nottingham
Marie-Soleil L’Allier, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada

In light of intensifying polycrisis (Lawrence et al., 2024), rooted in capitalism and the contradictions between capital accumulation and social reproduction within it (Albert, 2025; Jayasuriya, 2023), the outlook for socio-ecological transformation towards more just and sustainable livelihoods appears increasingly dim. This begs the question, what if anything can, and perhaps should, critical organisational scholarship do to address our current predicament, and to further desirable change towards liveable post-capitalist worlds? In this special issue, we connect this broad question to the counter-hegemonic potential often attributed to forms of alternative organising on the one hand, and ideas of degrowth on the other. While scholarship on both has developed in relative isolation from each other, their emergence and growing popularity can be arguably attributed to a common dissatisfaction with the capitalist and growth realism (Barca et al. 2019; Fisher 2009) of neoliberal programs endlessly regurgitating that there is no alternative (TINA) (Fournier 2008; Parker et al. 2014; Zanoni et al. 2017). Given these common roots and shared counter-hegemonic intentions, we believe that a mutual and systematic engagement with alternative organising and degrowth entails much potential to understand how to change our current predicament, countering capitalist polycrisis and organising liveable worlds, which we invite contributions to this special issue to engage with.

Scholarship on alternative organisation has emerged as a distinct sub-discipline within organisation and management studies, in response to continuous crises of capitalism such as the 2008 global financial crash, growing social inequalities and environmental breakdown (Parker et al. 2014; Husted et al. 2025). While many debates still exist on ‘what counts as alternative organising’ (Dahlman et al. 2024), much work on alternative organisations appears grounded in a postcapitalist ethos that not only contests TINA narratives, but is also determined to show the many ways in which other worlds are indeed possible and already existing (Zanoni et al. 2017). Research on alternative organising frequently engages with adjacent perspectives and topics such as Gibson-Graham’s (2006, 2008) diverse economies (Alakavuklar 2024), prefiguration and prefigurative politics (Chertkovskaya et al., 2024; Reinecke 2018; Schiller- Merkens, 2024; Zanoni 2020), anarchist, social movement and indigenous organising (Elidrissi and Courpasson 2021; Lobbedez 2024; Parker et al. 2020; Peredo 2023; Vieta and Heras 2022) or commoning (Fournier 2013; De Angelis and Harvie 2014). Due to disciplinary norms, however, much analyses of alternative organisations appear focused on intra-organisational issues. More recently, this has led researchers to call for a more thorough investigation of the ‘outside’ dimension of alternatives (Zanoni 2020, p. 3) and to interrogate how alternative organisations may contribute to a more fundamental socio-ecological transformation (Chertkovskaya et al. 2024; Colombo et al. 2024; Schiller-Merkens 2024; Shanahan 2024). This special issue joins such calls in inviting contributions that broaden our understanding of alternative organising towards systematic change and towards more liveable worlds.

Stemming from the Limits-to-Growth debate in the early 1970s (Meadows et al. 1972) and activism in France, Italy, Catalonia and Spain in the early 2000s, scholarship on degrowth has largely developed alongside research on alternative organisations. Despite some engagement with broader questions of post-growth organising and organisations (notably three special issues, including in this journal: Banerjee et al. 2021; Johnsen et al. 2017; Rätzer et al. 2018), however, only few and tentative analytical intersections have been made to emphasise their mutual relevance (Chertkovskaya and Paulsson 2021, Ehrnström-Fuentes and Biese 2023; Fournier 2008; Nyberg and Wright 2022; Parker et al. 2014). In particular, challenges remain on how to operationalise and translate degrowth within organisational research contexts (Vandeventer and Schmid 2024, Vandeventer and Lloveras 2021). Degrowth debates have gained currency in exposing and critiquing hegemonic formations of growth, by arguing for an absolute reduction of the use of energy and material resources within economies (e.g., Kallis et al. 2020; Hickel 2020; Banerjee et al. 2021). Beyond critique, these debates emphasise visions of alternative economies, which move away from growth and capitalism, by repoliticising economic activities and putting ecological sustainability, social justice and well- being at the forefront.

Alternative organising literature, in turn, has usually emphasised ‘alternatives’ challenging core principles of capitalism, for example, by focusing on principles of autonomy, solidarity and responsibility (Parker et al. 2014). They often operate on principles of mutual aid, shared governance, and community engagement, forging strong relational ties within their local and sometimes translocal contexts, and follow diverse logics of scaling (Chertkovskaya et al., 2024; Colombo et al. 2024; Daskalaki and Kokkinidis 2017; Kokkinidis 2015). At the same time, scholarship on alternative organising has problematised the dichotomy of capitalist/mainstream versus non-capitalist/alternative, acknowledging ‘the complex web of inter-relationships between capitalist and non-capitalist practices’ (Alakavuklar, 2024: 1598–1599). In short, while research in critical organisation studies shows the nuances and tensions of alternative organising operating within capitalist systems, degrowth discussions offer a normative ground for an ethical and political re-orientation of organisations, economies and societies beyond capitalism.

While degrowth scholarship has been primarily focused on addressing why a transformation away from growth and capitalism is needed and what it could look like, discussions have recently turned to questions of political strategies, asking how such transformation could come into being (Barlow et al. 2022; Maier 2023; Schmelzer et al. 2022). Engaging with Erik Olin Wright’s (2010, 2019) conceptual vocabulary of interstitial, symbiotic and ruptural strategies, this research has formulated pathways on how to further a social transformation in line with degrowth ideas, with sensitivity to local contexts and circumstances (Chertkovskaya 2022). Despite clear overlaps in assigning a privileged role to alternative, commons-based and bottom- up initiatives in spurring processes of wider socio-ecological change (Parker et al. 2013), debates on strategy have thus far largely been left unnoticed by scholarship on alternative organising (for exceptions, see Parker, 2023) – they are often seen as a topic that is usually mobilised to reproduce mainstream managerial logics (Levy et al. 2003) and economic development discourses (Greckhamer 2010).

Accordingly, this CfP builds on the understanding that within our current conjuncture marked by rapidly deteriorating conditions for life on this planet, post-capitalist debates have a lot to gain from a common research agenda of degrowth and alternative organising. Specifically, this special issue aims to develop these conversations by asking for contributions which go beyond critiques of growth and capitalism. We call for both empirical and conceptual analyses of alternative modes of organising in relation to degrowth and vice versa, while engaging critically and reflectively with both concepts. Such research may draw on practices of mutual projection (Vandeventer and Lloveras 2021), in which concepts of degrowth and alternative organising are mapped onto each other in order to question, challenge and rethink them in relation to the politics of socio-ecological transformation. Such critical analysis could, for instance, engage with questions on how degrowth strategies and politics may lead to a rethinking of alternative organising beyond the focus on intra-organisational issues and prefiguration. Simultaneously, debates on how alternative organisations may avoid forms of degeneration while attempting to change the hegemonic system (e.g., Shanahan 2024; Pansera and Rizzi 2020) may enable a rethinking of nascent degrowth organising and enable a more thorough investigation of how alternative forms of organising may or may not facilitate a wider socio-ecological transformation in relation to degrowth ideas. At the same time, we encourage further exploration of conceptual linkages that may be located at the intersection of degrowth and alternative organising, such as, e.g., commoning (Euler 2019; Spanier et al. 2023; Wittel and Korczynski 2023), to further a common research agenda.

Overall, this special issue aims to encourage research that engages critically with both degrowth and alternative organising at the backdrop of accelerating social-ecological crises as well as a global backlash against politics of a green and just transition. While our intention is to give a sense of direction to engage critically with concepts and ideas of degrowth and alternative organising, authors should not feel obliged to follow specific frameworks. Instead, we wish to encourage diversity of philosophical, theoretical and methodological approaches to engage with the questions posed in this call for papers.

Specific questions contributors may wish to address include but are certainly not limited to:

Conceptual and methodological connections

• What are theoretical linkages between conceptualisations of degrowth and alternative organising? How and to what extent are adjacent concepts such as, e.g., commoning, diverse economies and post-capitalism, useful to research on alternative organisation and degrowth? What other conceptual tools can further a common research agenda?
• What conceptualisations of alternative organising might be developed when scholars adopt perspectives, ideas and conceptualisations of degrowth? And vice versa, what conceptualisations of degrowth might be developed when scholars adopt perspectives, ideas, and conceptualisations of alternative organising?
• What gets included and what excluded in degrowth-oriented studies on alternative organisational phenomena, and why? How are notions of degrowth translated, negotiated, mobilised and enacted in alternative organisational research?

Practices

• What forms of alternative organising can be associated with degrowth and what does transformation in line with degrowth ideas mean for more conventional forms of organisation?
• How can diverse forms of alternative organising scale, diffuse, and catalyse transformative change in line with degrowth ideas, overcoming possible contradictions and conflicts?
• What questions and points of analysis arise for alternative organising and degrowth in the current conjuncture of global capitalism, (neo-)colonialism and imperialism?

Strategies

• What strategies for socio-ecological transformation can be developed through a combined analysis of degrowth and alternative organising in practice?
• How can critical perspectives to strategy enrich debates of alternative organising in relation to degrowth agendas?
• How could alternative forms of organising mobilise diverse strategies (e.g. interstitial, symbiotic or ruptural) to further transformative ambitions in relation to degrowth?

Authors' Enquiries

If you have any inquiries about the special issue and whether your work would fit, please contact the guest editors at: alternativedegrowthsi(at)gmail.com.

Online Workshop for Interested Authors

An online workshop for interested authors will be held in February 2026. Please submit your abstract (max. 800 words outlining focus, contribution, methods [if appropriate], and fit to the special issue) to alternativedegrowthsi(at)gmail.com by December 20th 2025. Participation in the workshop is not a necessary condition for authors to submit a full paper to the SI.

Submitting Your Paper

Papers may be submitted electronically from 1 September 2026 until the deadline date of 30 September 2026 to SAGETrack at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/organization, indicating the special issue in the system. Papers should be no more than 11,000 words, excluding references, and will be blind reviewed following the journal’s standard review process. Manuscripts should be prepared according to the guidelines published in Organization and on the journal’s website: https://www.sagepub.com/docs/default-source/msg/org.

Call for Papers and References (Link)