Between Scarcity and Virtue: How Collective Memory Shapes Organizational Capacity for Sufficiency Ethics

• In Event: 20867 - Problem-Solving Sociology of Development

Abstract

While sufficiency ethics offers crucial insights for addressing ecological crises, organizations often struggle to embrace and operationalize sufficiency-based practices. Drawing on collective memory theory and organizational anticipation studies, we develop a novel theoretical framework explaining why organizations resist sufficiency ethics despite mounting environmental pressures. We argue that organizations simultaneously hold competing collective memories about sufficiency— memories of scarcity (associated with hardship and deprivation) and memories of virtue (linked to traditional wisdom and cultural heritage). This dual memory tension fundamentally shapes organizations’ capacity to imagine and implement sufficient futures. Our framework introduces the concept of “organizational anticipatory capacity” and presents a memory-anticipation matrix demonstrating how different combinations of collective memory types and anticipatory capabilities influence the adoption of sufficiency practices. Through analysis of organizational cases, we show how this framework explains varying levels of success in implementing sufficiency ethics. We contribute to business ethics literature by theorizing the role of collective memory in sustainability transitions, introducing new constructs for understanding organizational resistance to sufficiency, and providing actionable pathways for building anticipatory capacity. The framework offers practical implications for organizational change management while advancing scholarly understanding of how historical consciousness shapes sustainable futures. Our findings suggest that successfully implementing sufficiency ethics requires organizations to actively engage with and reshape collective memories while building robust capacities for imagining alternative futures.

Author

• Saheli Nath, University of Central Oklahoma