Bridging the Divide: Integrating Ecology and Business for a Sustainable Future

As Kenneth Boulding famously quipped: “Anyone who believes that growth can go on forever is either a madman or an economist.” Ecological economics has long recognised that the economy cannot be considered in isolation from the social and environmental systems in which it is embedded. After all, as their shared etymological roots remind us, the words “economy” (oikos + nomos) and “ecology” (oikos + logos) are linguistic siblings.

While a dialogue between ecology and economics has long been established, business studies have largely remained estranged from this conversation. However, this is beginning to change. In recent years, in management and organisation studies scholarship, there has been a growing recognition that business  – like all human activity – is embedded in, and dependent upon, complex living systems. This realisation carries profound implications for what and how we teach in business schools. Yet, much of this territory remains uncharted.

This month’s challenge is an invitation for ecologists and business scholars to come together. Forty-three years after the Symposium on “Integrating Ecology and Economics” laid the foundation for ecological economics, it is time to ask: how can we integrate ecology and business studies? What can business learn from ecology, and what might ecology learn from engaging with business?

For full details and registration, click here.