Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/302675 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 17158
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Entrepreneurship scholarship and policy are based on the myth of firm growth as imperative and the related myth of perpetual economic growth. This paper takes issue with the obsession with this growth myth, discussing the dangers it poses. Green growth and sustainable entrepreneurship are exposed as oxymorons. Given the dangers and the impossibility of perpetual growth, the paper then tries to answer the question of what role entrepreneurship could play in a post-growth society or in degrowth (the proposed approach to get there). The tentative conclusion is that entrepreneurship is incompatible with current visions of post-growth and degrowth. Degrowth and post-growth societies are post-entrepreneurship societies. While seeing how post-growth and degrowth could be made compatible with entrepreneurship is complicated, it does not mean it is impossible. More imagination and attention by entrepreneurship and post-growth scholars on the nature of entrepreneurship beyond growth is required sooner rather than later. Since economic growth is not perpetual, time is running out.
Subjects: 
entrepreneurship
economic growth
capitalism
polycrisis
climate change
JEL: 
L26
L21
O40
O44
P17
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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