Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PROSPERA (Prospering without growth: Science, Technology and Innovation in a post-growth era)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-08-01 do 2024-01-31
The feasibility and desirability of endless economic growth is increasingly being questioned by scholars and activists. While envisioning alternative economic models is key to assure the sustainability and wellbeing of present and future generations, few studies have analysed what might be the role of ‘innovation’ in a postgrowth era. Innovating has become the imperative for the survival and expansion of any form of organisation. But this ‘innovate or die mania’ underpins assumptions – such as technological determinism and productivism - that neglect the socially constructed character of technological development, its politics and its capacity to enable just and equitable societies but also dystopian technocratic futures. This project posits that untangling innovation from growth is key to imagining a post-growth era. If growth is going to be unsustainable, we need new narratives for innovation that would accordingly also have to change and increase the scope of the innovation concept itself, beyond technology, into cultural and institutional change, and indeed social life and social order. Organizations – in particular capitalist enterprises - are the core of modern industrial societies but are also one of the places in which the discourse of growth is legitimised and constantly reproduced. However, they can also be the places in which people can start to build the capacity for developing alternatives to challenges the growth ideology. But how organizations would look like in a different paradigm, in a system that is not based on and doesn’t not rely on endless growth? Under which conditions STI without growth would be able to flourish? What levels of technological complexity can we reach in a non-growing economy? What policies, infrastructures and organizational forms are needed or are more likely to facilitate this new paradigm of STI? These are questions, rarely asked by innovation, management and organization scholars, that PROSPERA will address.
The concepts exposed above suggest that beyond a certain point, and for a variety of reasons, relentless economic growth may be neither desirable nor indeed feasible. Based on these reflections PROSPERA aspires to explore what STI would look like in a society that is not dominated by the imperative of pursuing endless economic growth. In the specific, this project will address the following four objectives:
OB1: To formulate a robust and coherent theoretical understanding of how the processes and institutions that emerged around the development of science, technology and innovation should be reconfigured to address the challenged posed by a post-growth era.
OB2: To identify the organizational settings – and the conditions needed for their emergence - in which non growth-oriented science, technology and innovation practices are more likely to flourish.
OB3: To understand under which conditions non-growth-oriented organizations can create – or reconfigure pre-existing- networks in which knowledge and value are produced outside the logic of maximization of economic growth.
OB4: To identify what social actors and their related institutions are the most adequate, capable and probable to trigger a transition towards a post-growth mode of innovating; the alliances, the political struggles and the institutional changes that are needed for this change to occur.
The concepts exposed above suggest that beyond a certain point, and for a variety of reasons, relentless economic growth may be neither desirable nor indeed feasible. Based on these reflections PROSPERA aspires to explore what STI would look like in a society that is not dominated by the imperative of pursuing endless economic growth. In the specific, this project will address the following four objectives:
OB1: To formulate a robust and coherent theoretical understanding of how the processes and institutions that emerged around the development of science, technology and innovation should be reconfigured to address the challenged posed by a post-growth era.
OB2: To identify the organizational settings – and the conditions needed for their emergence - in which non growth-oriented science, technology and innovation practices are more likely to flourish.
OB3: To understand under which conditions non-growth-oriented organizations can create – or reconfigure pre-existing- networks in which knowledge and value are produced outside the logic of maximization of economic growth.
OB4: To identify what social actors and their related institutions are the most adequate, capable and probable to trigger a transition towards a post-growth mode of innovating; the alliances, the political struggles and the institutional changes that are needed for this change to occur.
One of the main achievements of PROSPERA is to be able of setting up an excellent research group that will pave the way to achieve one of the most important objectives of the project that is to create a critical mass in the academic community to explore alternatives to Science, Technology and Innovation theories and practices based on the ideology of endless economic growth.
Therefore, during the first semester, most of the efforts were focused on carrying out the recruiting process to hire staff and set up such research group of excellence. From September to November, most of the team joined PROSPERA and began working on the activities as scheduled. One of the main outcomes for this period is the book entitled “Critical perspectives on Growth”, to be published next reporting period in English and Spanish by the editorial of University of Vigo. In the reporting period, the group has also published 6 scientific papers that have been uploaded on the participant portal.
Simultaneously, during this period, the project website was created and launched, as well as social media accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter.
From the very beginning, the team members have been encouraged to participate in international conferences to present academic papers and other work and to build relationships with other researchers. During this period the team presented in major academic conferences like 4S, EASST, STS Graz and the European Ecological Economics conferences among many others.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the efforts of the Principal Investigator to lay the foundations to establish an international network working on this subject. During this period, the research group hosted more than 8 visiting researchers, both early stage and experimented researchers, and organized 34 internal workshops and 9 external seminars, addressed to the general public.
Therefore, during the first semester, most of the efforts were focused on carrying out the recruiting process to hire staff and set up such research group of excellence. From September to November, most of the team joined PROSPERA and began working on the activities as scheduled. One of the main outcomes for this period is the book entitled “Critical perspectives on Growth”, to be published next reporting period in English and Spanish by the editorial of University of Vigo. In the reporting period, the group has also published 6 scientific papers that have been uploaded on the participant portal.
Simultaneously, during this period, the project website was created and launched, as well as social media accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter.
From the very beginning, the team members have been encouraged to participate in international conferences to present academic papers and other work and to build relationships with other researchers. During this period the team presented in major academic conferences like 4S, EASST, STS Graz and the European Ecological Economics conferences among many others.
Finally, it is worth mentioning the efforts of the Principal Investigator to lay the foundations to establish an international network working on this subject. During this period, the research group hosted more than 8 visiting researchers, both early stage and experimented researchers, and organized 34 internal workshops and 9 external seminars, addressed to the general public.
PROSPERA aspires to trigger a non-incremental leap forward in the way organizations and STI institutions conceptualise economic growth as a source of success and progress. The challenge is to disrupt and undermine well-established beliefs about progress and modernity that have transformed the idea of endless economic growth in a goal per se. This is a really high-risk task because the entire architecture of our modern economies is designed to maximise growth e.g. of GDP, profits, investments, industrial outcome etc. Therefore, a reconfiguration of the economic system toward a post-growth paradigm is likely to be strongly opposed by the academic, industrial and political elites that benefit from and promote the ideology of growth. On the other hand, by reframing the role of organizations in the production of science and innovation, the project has the potential to deliver ground-breaking contributions to a more sustainable and just way of organising our economies. In particular, the project aspires to produce impact at three different levels: Academic, Practice and Policy level.