- 23 April 2025, 12:15-14:15
- Ankkuri K228 Vuokko (Vaasa) & Teams (Hybrid)
Join us at the campus or online for the second seminar of the year of the Sustainable Business and Society thematic group that focuses on post-growth! This time, we have presentations by two doctoral researchers from Vaasa and one from the University of Helsinki. The presentations will discuss post-growth from the organisational, consumer, and policy perspectives.
Microsoft Teams: Join the meeting now
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Subjective well-being as a driver for change towards sustainable anti-consumption of clothing
Essi Vesterinen
Essi Vesterinen is a doctoral researcher at the School of Marketing and Communication. Her research is situated in the fields of consumer research and marketing, focusing on sustainable consumption, anti-consumption, consumer well-being and social marketing.
Clothing industry is one of the most problematic sectors in terms of climate change and overconsumption. Despite of the current efforts, its emissions keep on increasing due to a decrease in garment use-time and increase in total fibre production, indicating that more radical approaches such as anti-consumption are needed. In addition, the current strategies have been largely based on consumers’ altruism and disregarded the fact that humans are inclined towards self-interest. Recent studies have shown that reducing consumption, i.e. anti-consumption, has positive consequences also for the well-being of the consumer, providing an interesting new argument for reducing one’s consumption.
Essi will present her doctoral thesis research that further explores the link between consumer subjective well-being and anti-consumption in the context of sustainable clothing consumption and tests whether this link could be used as a driver to reduce clothing consumption in social and commercial marketing
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How do contemporary economic organisations advocate degrowth? An institutional work perspective
Ella Tolonen
Ella is a doctoral researcher in Industrial Management. Her research focuses on low-carbon transition and sustainability from the organizational perspective. In her dissertation, Ella studies incumbent organizations’ behaviour in the context of decarbonization. Her topics include energy communities, degrowth, sustainable and circular business models, transition risks, and just transition.
Degrowth presents a novel research area that has been gaining attention also among Nordic organisational scholars. As the degrowth transformation must emerge from within the current economic system, it is crucial to consider the role contemporary economic organisations may play in it. At the seminar, Ella will present her recent research that strives to increase understanding of the actions that different kinds of economic organisations can undertake to foster the institutionalisation of degrowth.
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Towards a transformative post-growth innovation policy? A systematic map
Riina Bhatia
Riina is a doctoral researcher in Interdisciplinary Environmental research at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on post-growth sustainability transformation in the context of Global North and Global South. She studies innovations, technologies and organizations from a post-growth perspective.
Innovations and technologies have historically played a crucial role in both economic growth and mainstream approaches to sustainability. However, given the improbability of absolute decoupling, de- and post-growth as alternatives to sustainability transitions are increasingly being discussed. Riina will discuss post-growth in the context of transformative innovation policy. Building on a systematic mapping review, she discusses post-growth approaches to technology and innovation, showing that in order to reach strongly sustainable transformations, repolitization of technology and innovation policy towards locally oriented, community-based, needs-driven, multi-scale technologies and social innovations is needed.
