Addressing the obscurity of change in values in degrowth business

Abstract

This paper takes the recent degrowth business framework as a starting point and looks deeper into one particular part of it, the change in values. It has been claimed that the agential level (i.e., that of individuals) and associated with it change in values is what underpins the remaining elements of the degrowth business framework, i.e., that change in values gives rise to degrowth compatible practices, principles, and operations. This is because, according to critical realism, individual humans are where agency resides. Considering that an immense hope is placed into the agents, the change in values needs to receive substantially more attention. As it stands, currently this category is underexplored and remains obscure on its own and in relation to degrowth business specifically. This paper attempts to address this obscurity and shed light on change in values of agents, while adopting the same philosophy of critical realism which underlaboured the construction of the degrowth business framework itself and supplementing it with the insights from the philosophy of existentialism which allows us to structure human existence and change in values specifically around three defined aspects of our being in the world.