Steward-owned companies are perfectly positioned to be a frontrunner in adopting a post-growth strategy. How? Helping answer that question inspired master student Carlotta Luisa Kelber to create a toolbox for entrepreneurs. In the toolbox you will find inspiration from theory and practice, with insights from over 20 Dutch and German steward-owned companies.
A post-growth toolbox
Our economy is built on the assumption of endless growth. For decades, economic growth has been the benchmark for progress. But infinite growth on a finite planet is simply impossible. Steward-ownership helps challenge this paradigm by redesigning ownership. Yet ownership is just one dimension of a business. The toolbox explores 4 more.
In the toolbox you will find post-growth strategies across 5 key dimensions:
1. Size and scope: How can localisation, local embeddedness and a size limitation help companies to be rooted in their communities and respond to local social and ecological needs?
2. Strategy: How can a strategy of working towards sufficiency be realised by for instance sustainable material use, using profit for ecological restoration, high quality products and promoting sustainable consumption? But also: cooperation and activist engagement.
3. Governance: How can democratic, participatory and decentralized governance and transparency help steward-owned companies to take next steps?
4. Ownership: Steward-owned companies are perfectly positioned to work on post-growth strategies, enabled by having a mission lock, long term thinking and being able to create room for democratic governance.
5. Relationship to profit: With a limit on the distribution of profits, steward-owned companies can create a different relation to profit. How can a purpose driven company realise organic growth, non-growth or non-profit opportunities? And how can spaces for reflection create opportunities to reinvent what growth means and how profit can be redistributed to contribute rather than extract?
Start using the toolbox
The toolbox is not about telling you what to do. It’s about sharing ideas, opening doors, and showing how steward-owned businesses can explore and take steps towards post-growth futures.
In the toolbox you will find inspiration from both theory and practice to explore and develop a strategy for aligning your business with ecological and social limits