Degrowth and sufficiency checklist - The Sustainability Management Wiki

Authors: Hannah Zeppen, Imke Wieting, Lasse von Dufving
Edited by:
Last updated: June 18, 2026

Executive summary

Degrowth and sufficiency challenge the assumption that organizations must continuously expand production, consumption, and profit to create value. For organizations seeking stronger social and ecological performance, the article presents degrowth not as a rigid rulebook, but as a practical reflection framework for reducing resource and energy use, prioritizing human well-being, and aligning business activity with planetary limits. Sufficiency complements this by asking what is “good enough” to meet genuine needs without encouraging unnecessary consumption.

Because few practical degrowth tools exist for organizations, the article reviews several existing resources: academic templates on degrowth-oriented value creation, assessment criteria for degrowth in business, a consultancy study on post-growth business models, and the Common Good Balance Sheet. These tools provide useful foundations, but many are either research-oriented, lengthy, or focused on accounting and governance rather than offering a concise, actionable starting point for companies.

The proposed Degrowth and Sufficiency Checklist translates the concept into organizational questions and suggested measures. It begins with operational areas that are often easier to influence, such as products and services, resource use, supply chains, maintenance, repairability, access-based models, and open licenses. It then moves into more complex areas, including corporate culture, human resource management, marketing, communication, governance, ownership, finance, and legal form. Across these areas, organizations are encouraged to assess feasibility, identify barriers, and develop context-specific actions rather than adopt one-size-fits-all solutions.

Key implications for organizations include designing products and services around real social or ecological needs, extending product life, reducing artificial demand, regionalizing and improving supply chains where appropriate, supporting employee well-being, communicating transparently, and making decision-making more democratic and stakeholder-oriented. The article also emphasizes the limits of any checklist: a fully developed degrowth business model depends heavily on sector, ownership, legal context, and market conditions. Therefore, the checklist should be used as an entry point for deeper strategy work, experimentation, and continued learning.

1 Motivation and background

At first glance, implementing degrowth in businesses seems like an impossible task. Many articles¹^,²^,³ related to the economic framework of degrowth and its relation to traditional business studies will point out the central paradox inherent to the relationship of these two concepts. While growth remains a primary objective for most businesses, the degrowth perspective fundamentally questions the sustainability and desirability of that objective.² This becomes particularly apparent considering the classical approach to Business Administration that prioritizes market performance, competitiveness, and the resilience of individual companies, thereby defining company growth as a sign of its successful application.⁴

Degrowth, on the other hand, which is often discussed as part of post-growth economic theory, refers to an approach that aims to reshape society for a sustainable future, so that both consumption and the economy stay at levels where continuous growth is not necessary for maintaining a good standard of living.² Essentially, degrowth encourages reducing resource and energy use in advanced economies, shifting emphasis away from the gross domestic product (GDP) toward human well-being, environmental sustainability and social impact.⁵ Closely related to this is the concept of sufficiency, which can be considered a necessary part of the process toward degrowth, advocating for a system of consumption that focuses on fulfilling basic human needs in a way that is “good enough”⁶^,⁷ for everyone without exceeding planetary limits through constantly increasing commercial activity. Both concepts aim for a stable state with the goal of reducing the economy to a level where sufficiency is reached while still ensuring societal progress and well-being in the age of the climate crisis that the global community is currently challenged with.

Accordingly, this paper draws on existing sources.⁸^,⁹^,¹⁰ on degrowth, post-growth and sufficiency, which already provide an extensive overview of the various interpretations and understandings of these concepts, like the existing Sustainability Management Wiki article on post- and degrowth.¹¹ However, it should be emphasized that there is no uniform definition of degrowth, and no single truth about its predicted effects and prerequisites. It should also be noted that the concept differs from models such as the “Circular economy model” or schemes that aim to monitor and reduce emissions, although these models can still be incorporated to support its successful implementation. That said, research¹²^,¹³, even though conclusions may vary a lot, largely supports the view of sustainability theorists and activists.¹⁴^,¹⁵ that real improvements in areas like climate change, ecological consumption and planetary health are most effectively achieved through a degrowth and sufficiency-based approach.

Nonetheless, although the concept has been the subject of controversial media debates to the point where it has been labeled as “degrowth communism”.¹⁶, it is often disregarded or dismissed. Particularly during periods of economic recession, growth is perceived as the solution to economic instability and the driver of prosperity and wealth.¹⁷ So logically, a closer engagement with this topic reveals that the question of how a society best designs and changes the future for the better is a very complex issue.

Consequently, in acknowledging the potential that this concept contains, the following article aims to provide interested companies with the tools, impulses and ideas to implement elements of degrowth theory into practice without ignoring the built-in conflict that accompanies its practical application. Hence, the template does not seek to impose strict rules or a categorical implementation of degrowth at all levels but rather intends to provide an opportunity for reflection that can be one of the first steps toward a more sustainable future.

2 Existing tools and templates

The following section will take a closer look at existing templates. Which of these templates are useful depends on context and hence primarily on who is going to use said template and for what purpose. Therefore, this section aims to highlight a small selection of templates that are useful to very different audiences pursuing different goals.

2.1 The lack of degrowth templates

Degrowth at its core is a radically different way to structure the economy. This means that it is often a largely philosophical topic far removed from the practical issues that a template should cover. Thus, it is not surprising that few real degrowth templates exist, and those that do exist are mostly found in academic literature and are thus somewhat removed from the needs of firms. The following four templates were selected because they were comprehensive, covering many degrowth initiatives a company might undertake, while still remaining usable for companies without too much further research.

2.2 Template 1: Degrowth-oriented organisational value creation

Published in the Journal of Ecological Economics in 2023, the degrowth-oriented organizational value creation template is an addendum (Appendix A) to a thorough scientific literature review of value creation in Degrowth-oriented companies.¹⁸ The authors, Tobias Froese, Markus Richter, Florian Hofmann, and Florian Lüdeke-Freund, synthesized the existing degrowth literature to identify 39 “patterns,” which essentially are relatively concrete degrowth initiatives a company might undertake.

These “patterns” are arranged in a list with each having a name, a short description, a description of the problem this initiative seeks to address, one or more real-world examples, and a list of key scientific sources in which this pattern was identified. While this list of patterns is both comprehensive and has a strong foundation in research, it lacks practical usability as it is not designed as an actual template. Regarding use cases, the list in Appendix A is a great resource for anyone in a company wishing to find scientific descriptions of specific initiatives based on real-world examples. The rest of the article is equally useful for anyone wishing to understand the more abstract theoretical foundation of what it means for a company to create value in a degrowth world.

2.3 Template 2: Assessment criteria for degrowth in businesses

This list closely resembles the previous one. It is also a part of a larger scientific literature review and is constructed as a list for scientific use rather than as a tool to be used by companies. The relevant section 3.1 is part of the article “Degrowth in business: An oxymoron or a viable business model for sustainability?” which builds on case studies and the wider degrowth literature to identify some key markers to identify companies that operate according to degrowth principles.¹

The list in section 3.1 is actually two separate lists, the first being a synthesis of three previous analyses of case studies and the second focusing on how companies could achieve the criteria identified in the first list. Taken together as one template, the two lists are still somewhat less comprehensive than the previous template, while largely recommending the same initiatives, but especially the second list is also more concrete and condensed. Regarding use cases, the two lists in section 3.1 are a good introductory inspiration for those looking for a condensed list of relatively concrete initiatives a company might take to align itself with Degrowth. However, almost all the points in this list will also be covered in the template contained in this article.

2.4 Template 3: The consultancy study

Template 3, a consultancy study, is an almost 150-page document created by Prophil and distributed for free on their website. This template is written with a business audience in mind and therefore especially focuses on issues of governance and accounting. It draws upon a host of CEO/owner interviews and case studies to give practical advice to company leaders wishing to embrace degrowth.¹⁹

Sadly, it does not contain a condensed list of recommended degrowth initiatives, which makes it less useful as a template, though the table of contents can serve as a very simple template. The focus on interviews also makes it more of an inspirational document than a fixed guide for establishing a fixed guide on setting and/or achieving Degrowth targets. It is especially useful as an inspiration for business leaders or founders who want to establish a non-conventional company, doubly so if they operate a business similar to those featured in the interviews.

2.5 Tool 4: The common good balance sheet

Published by the Economy for the Common Good (ECG), the common good balance sheet is a detailed guide to creating a common good evaluation for businesses and is a great tool for companies looking to measure their contribution to society. The more than 100-page document gives concrete in-depth advice focused on accounting and governance aspects, though it also serves as a comprehensive list that highlights all the areas in which a company can implement changes.²⁰

For Degrowth, section D3.2 is particularly relevant as it contains a good overview of sufficiency measures a business might take, being particularly focused on communication as a key aspect of promoting sufficiency. It can be particularly useful for leaders of larger businesses that want a comprehensive accounting system for general sustainability. Separate guides exist for municipalities and educational institutions.

3 New template: Degrowth and sufficiency checklist

This section gives a quick overview of the design principles behind the degrowth template with further elaboration on the template’s individual sections.

3.1 Overall design choice

As the previous analysis of already existing templates has shown, degrowth remains a largely scientific and abstract concept for companies with little practical guidance. This template aims to fill that gap by translating degrowth into tangible, clear criteria and concrete measures that are applicable to a wide variety of businesses while also remaining short and concise to make it an easy entry point into further research.

The degrowth and sufficiency checklist is designed as a questionnaire, aiming to cover the following three points in each category. The first step is a guiding question that encourages businesses to assess where there is potential for change. This assessment aims to determine how entrenched certain conditions are in the business and where change toward degrowth practices is more likely to succeed and, as such, might warrant further investigation. The second step moves beyond mere evaluation, asking businesses to reflect on their status quo and to identify where barriers may hinder alignment with the principles of degrowth. Finally, the questionnaire provides a series of general practical suggestions and space for their own ideas to help companies translate their insights from the preceding two steps into concrete measures for consideration.

Question design

In general, the chosen format of the questions intends to open the possibility for broader discussion rather than a simple “yes-or-no answer. Degrowth will likely not look the same for any two companies, so this questionnaire can only be a guide nudging companies to consider different ways to do business. A collection of more concrete guides for specific countries, sectors, and company sizes would be an excellent addition to this questionnaire but sadly does not exist in any meaningful way. The best substitutes are the literature reviews of case studies which are linked frequently throughout this article and the questionnaire itself.

For the first step, the self-assessment of the company, the questionnaire uses a rating scale from one to five, where one indicates that the given practice would be easy to implement while five represents an almost impossible change. This approach allows for a more detailed understanding of the company’s current situation than a simple yes/no response.

For the second step, open-ended questions are used to encourage a reflective approach focused on specifying areas of potential and challenge. If this step yields little insight, it is recommended to use a workshop approach or even appoint a “devil’s advocate” to gain access to a wider range of perspectives and ideas.

Structure

To ensure a logical structure for the questions and help companies understand the many dimensions that degrowth encompasses, the questionnaire has been divided into multiple categories that together form a holistic assessment of company’s alignment with the concept of degrowth. The first category, Products and Services, primarily examines the composition, functionality, and design of the company’s product and service portfolio as well as the ways in which customers can access these. Closely linked to this is the category Resource and Supply Chain Management, which focuses on minimizing a company’s environmental impact through efficient energy and resource use, circular economy practices and regionalized supply chains. Corporate Culture then looks at how internal practices and working conditions support employee well-being. Following this, the fourth category, Marketing and Communication addresses how companies promote their products and/or service as well as convey their practices to customers and other stakeholders. Afterward, the Governance category examines the company’s organizational structures and decision-making processes. Finally, the questionnaire addresses foundational aspects such as the corporate structure and funding within the category of Ownership Model, Legal Form, and Finance, which shape long-term plans, goals and growth targets.

The questionnaire deliberately begins with the operational dimension, namely products and services, as these can be adjusted relatively easily while still leading to measurable improvements regarding the alignment of the concept of degrowth. As companies work through the questionnaire, the potentially required interventions become increasingly complex and often demand a rethinking of the company’s identity as well as long-term purpose and are thus not easy to change.²¹ At this stage, companies increasingly face the risk of failure, as moving away from the expectations imposed by traditional, growth-based market systems often means operating in an environment that does not yet support such transitions.¹¹ Therefore, it is more effective to begin with measures that most companies can implement relatively easily and with likely less internal pushback.

Companies can decide who is responsible for each part. It would also be useful to have a workshop format that enables a more democratic approach, or a survey format that allows employees’ ideas to be incorporated. In the following sections, each category will be presented in detail.

3.2 Products and services

The product and service portfolio is a direct reflection of a company’s impact on environmental sustainability as well as social well-being and is therefore one of the key elements a company should evaluate when aiming to transform its business according to degrowth principles. In degrowth-oriented businesses products and services should therefore aim to address genuine problems instead of stimulating consumption for its own sake.²² Thus, the first assessment questions of the questionnaire in this category encourage companies to critically examine the effort it would require to further align their product and service portfolio with real human or ecological needs, rather than reinforcing patterns of overconsumption.

This naturally also raises questions about the design of the product. In many conventional businesses, product life cycles are intentionally shortened to encourage repeated purchases.²³^,²⁴ This approach, of course, fundamentally contradicts the concept of degrowth, as it accelerates resource exploitation and waste generation. Degrowth-oriented businesses should, in turn, focus on the longevity of their products by designing them for durability, quality, repairability, recyclability, and modularity, which allows components to be replaced without discarding the entire product.²² Accordingly, it is necessary to ask companies how feasible it would be to improve these characteristics of their products.

However, even the most durable, high-quality products often require maintenance over time. From a degrowth perspective, companies should thus consider offering affordable maintenance services, repair workshops, comprehensible repair guides or other forms of customer education to help ensure that their products remain in use as long as possible.²⁵ Consequently, it is reasonable to invite companies to assess how realistic it would be for them to expand maintenance and life-extension services within their portfolio.

Furthermore, degrowth challenges the assumption that individual well-being is tied to personal possessions. Access-based models, such as sharing, leasing, or renting, allow multiple consumers to benefit from the same product and thereby not only reducing the total number of goods produced but also the resulting emissions.²⁵^,²⁶ Therefore, the fourth self-assessment question in this category invites companies to reflect on how feasible it would be to shift their portfolio toward access-based models rather than ownership.

A complementary strategy would be to adopt open licenses. By releasing, for example, product designs or non-competing resources such as design knowledge or repair manuals, companies remove legal and technical barriers that hinder their collective use and community-driven innovation.¹⁸ Thus, open licenses can support circular economy goals by enabling communities to participate in repair, localization of production and reduction of waste.²⁷ For this reason, the questionnaire encourages companies to assess how reasonable it would be, given their current business model and capabilities, to adopt open licenses for some parts of their portfolio.

3.3 Resource and supply chain management

As a central part of sustainable business administration, resource and supply chain management are areas in which optimization can have the most direct impact on a company’s sustainability performance. With the right tools and newly emerging technologies, it is relatively easy to imagine a reduction in the resources consumed when transporting a given quantity of products or raw materials in the future. However, degrowth primarily focuses on restructuring and relocating supply chains closer to production or company locations, which can simultaneously improve the company’s sustainability and resilience to environmental risks.²³

Still, the feasibility of this depends heavily on transport and production costs. In the manufacturing industry in particular, it is also possible that essential parts can no longer be produced domestically, making it significantly harder for the company to achieve a reduction in energy consumption through a change in transportation and logistics. It is also not always more resource-efficient to choose the shortest distance, but rather to consider the means of transport as their environmental impact can vary significantly.²⁸

Complete restructuring is not the goal of this section. Ideally, the company should take a holistic approach when discussing how it wants to shape its future resource and supply chain management, which might lead to gradual changes that already hold a lot of potential.

3.4 Corporate culture and human resource management

When talking about sustainability performance, an additional but often underestimated area that can have a considerable influence²⁹ on the actual implementation of degrowth is the extent to which the company holds itself accountable to operate in a socially responsible manner. Naturally, this can best be implemented in a company in the areas of corporate culture and human resource management by influencing employees’ work models and lifestyles.

A company that uses the degrowth checklist has likely already made sustainability a key part of its corporate culture. Typically, however, the focus is on the numbers rather than the people. Focusing on this, meanwhile, can be a valuable addition that emphasizes employee satisfaction while encouraging them to support degrowth professionally, but also integrating it into their private lives. This goes hand in hand with the principles of sufficiency, which call for salaries to no longer be viewed as a performance incentive, but instead to be gradually aligned with one another. At the same time, a direct reduction in wages is, of course, not advisable, as it could deter many employees and drive them to other companies. Rather, it is essential, especially for senior management, to find other incentives and allow wages to stagnate in some management levels, while still increasing lower wages to match the higher ones over time. In parallel, employees are most likely to forgo part of their salary if they receive other benefits in return. This could be achieved by offering reduced working hours and greater flexibility, which would primarily benefit those with significant personal responsibilities, like a family or elderly parents.

Rather than just serving as an excuse to reduce labor costs, life satisfaction should be the key factor. That is why regular feedback sessions are recommended to guide and support employees on the path to degrowth and truly measure the success of a degrowth- and sustainability-focused HR management.

3.5 Marketing and communication

Following on from the previous point, a company has a responsibility toward its employees, its potential customers, and the society it operates in. By using a marketing philosophy that aims to promote degrowth, it might even reach people who are not part of their usual customer base. This makes it a powerful tool that can influence social discourse and consensus, steering it toward the elements of life that bring meaning and happiness beyond the simple increase of consumption, which is usually the focus in traditional marketing campaigns.²²^,²⁹ Instead, the marketing campaigns should focus on the re-evaluation and reconceptualization of commonly perpetuated societal standards, shifting cultural values to prioritize free time and leisure over productivity and slow living over materialism and fast consumerism.³⁰ This should ideally include campaigns that center rethinking notions of wealth, value, scarcity, and abundance in light of ecological limits.³⁰

Consequently, Communication and Public Relations must also be harmonized with this marketing concept in order to ensure that a consistent image is created and the strategy is understood intuitively and consistently by the departments responsible for marketing, communications, and PR alike. To achieve this, the template centers transparency, consumer education and sufficiency, to ensure that the company’s marketing avoids stimulating artificial demand. This can be achieved by analyzing the products in order to filter out their usefulness and contribution to human well-being and focusing on these aspects. However, as long as it aligns with degrowth principles, the message conveyed does not always have to match the product perfectly; rather, it should suit the company’s needs and strategic goals toward degrowth.

3.6 Governance

Governance deals with the rules, systems and rights that are used to make decisions and is likely to be one of the areas where degrowth initiatives will be hardest to implement.²¹ The main focus of the degrowth literature regarding governance is the transformation of how decisions are made and by whom. For companies seeking to implement degrowth, this requires a shift toward more democratic, inclusive, and participatory structures. Decision-making must actively involve all relevant stakeholders.²² For more information on the theoretical background for these next two steps, the wiki article on post- and degrowth is an excellent source.

Internally, this means adopting flatter hierarchies, decentralizing authority, and promoting worker self-management to ensure greater autonomy at all levels. Governance processes need to emphasize collaboration over control.¹⁸^,²² The degrowth template breaks this process down into two sections: Internal democratic leadership and external stakeholder participation. This separation assumes some companies might have security concerns that make the former easier to implement than the latter, though both go hand in hand in most cases. As this is an area where fundamental change is often going to be difficult, the template focuses on identifying key stakeholders and barriers to change.

Due to these same difficulties, the recommended measures also focus on relatively easily implemented initiatives that still further an orientation toward degrowth. Unfortunately, there can be no simple guide for achieving wider democratization and participation as such a change is too dependent on cultural, legal, economic and company-specific factors.³¹

3.7 Strategy, ownership model, legal form and finance

The last section of the template deals with areas where taking degrowth seriously will be hardest for most companies, although doing so is also often a requirement for the previous initiatives to truly work: Moving from shareholder value to providing a social good.¹¹^,³² In the degrowth literature this process has largely been described for small businesses where direct ownership and local embeddedness are a given, with the power and interests of investors being seen as a major degrowth obstacle for large businesses.³³^,³⁴

Moving toward a degrowth economy will not require all companies to shrink their operations, it does, however, require that companies are run for the benefit of society and the environment, which often clashes with the pursuit of ever-increasing shareholder value and/or profits.¹⁸

The template focuses on three aspects: Finding an ideal size for the company, identifying alternative sources for necessary financing, and moving toward some legal form that enshrines social goals as an essential part of the organization. Especially the latter two steps are largely dependent on the jurisdiction in which the company operates and are thus kept very generalized.

3.8 Shortcomings and further readings

When working with degrowth in a business environment it is important to note that there is no clear picture of how exactly a true degrowth business will look. As a wider degrowth economy does not yet exist, a perfect degrowth business also cannot exist yet.² This, coupled with the design choice to focus on concrete and more or less realistic initiatives for a wide range of companies, has limited the linked template to an introductory guide. For companies to develop a true degrowth strategy it will need to be expanded through further research into case studies, degrowth philosophy and their specific legal and societal context.³ A key aspect that this template cannot answer is whether degrowth can be implemented in the current business environment as this will depend almost entirely on company owners’ goals and the business environment in which they operate.

For this, the previous section analyzing other existing tools serves as a good starting point for further research into concrete measures and more information, as does the post- and degrowth Wiki article for the theoretical basis of degrowth. This template can therefore be understood as a toolbox that cannot cover all possible needs, because the systems for which it is created are constantly changing and adapting to circumstances, making it impossible to find cookie-cutter solutions. Rather, the wide range of literature recommendations in the references offers valuable insights that every company interested in the degrowth concept would profit from exploring.

References

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