Abstract
The escalating severity of environmental challenges is prompting a growing proportion of management scholars to adopt more radical perspectives than the three-pillar approach to sustainable development - economic, environmental and social - in which the economic pillar always ends up taking precedence (Hickel, 2019; Robinson, 2004). There is a call to produce new frameworks and analyze new practices (Wright et al, 2018; Gibson, 2015). Indeed, recent research in climate and biodiversity sciences shows that the changes currently being made by economic players and the transformation of business models are not enough (IPCC, 2022; IPBES, 2019). Faced with the complexity of the challenge of crossing the "planetary boundaries" (Rockström et al. 2009), marketing researchers are calling for new discussions to transform the marketing activities of organizations according to the principles of strong sustainability (Press, 2021; Volle and Schouten, 2022) or degrowth (Lloveras and al, 2022). While the theoretical ambition is there, empirical studies are still lacking to understand how to operationalize such a transformation on a corporate scale. As the traditional objective of marketing is to develop value through increased sales or market share, using consumerist advertising, it's considered by many as contrary to the principles of strong sustainability (Gossen et al, 2019).Our research question is the following: How an organization transforms its marketing practices to integrate a model that respects the planetary boundaries? Here we will focus on one objective : what are the drivers and obstacles to the adoption of such a model within an organization that intend to implement such a model ?To study how a company concretely engages in this strategic change in its marketing activities, we use the practice theory approach (Bourdieu, 1990; Giddens, 1986). As the marketing literature has not yet produced a conceptual framework to describe the operational part of the transformation, it is necessary to produce theory through observation and analysis of what actors in the field actually do when they cope withthis transformation. In this work, we are adopting the single-case study method (Yin, 2009) to analyze the transformation in a business organization that has decided to adopt a post-growth model based on the respect of the planetary boundaries. Using a qualitative approach, our data collection is multi-method (participant observation, semi-structured interviews, study of internal documents and a notes book written by the researcher). The fieldwork took place in the marketing department of "Les Laboratoires Expanscience" between January and December 2023.