Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


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                           Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions
                                                  journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eist


Research article

Redefining success in organizing towards degrowth
Filka Sekulova a, b, *, Isabelle Anguelovski b, c, Lucía Argüelles a
a
  Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain
b
  Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, (ICTA), Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
c
  ICREA Research Professor, Spain




A R T I C L E I N F O                                   A B S T R A C T

Keywords:                                               In order to untangle the meaning of success, or rather, thriving, for community-based initiatives
Sustainability transition                               (CBIs) that embody and prefigure degrowth, we bring sustainability transition, prefigurative
Degrowth organizing                                     politics, and degrowth scholarships in conversation with group facilitation practice and living
Prefiguration
                                                        systems theory. The article puts forward a model of organizational thriving grounded in the
Community-based initiatives
                                                        achievement of results while attending to organizational processes and members’ needs. We
Care
Success                                                 explore the trajectories of five CBIs located in the province of Barcelona (Spain), looking into the
                                                        ways such model is reflected, performed, and experienced by each of these. A key insight of our
                                                        nine-year research is that ‘care’ is core to success. Sustainability transition, and degrowth orga­
                                                        nizing thus need to acknowledge that ‘success’ does not only stem from the realization of tangible
                                                        results but from the consideration of members’ needs and the quality of group communication,
                                                        cohesion, inclusion and decision-making processes inasmuch as reaching targets.




1. Introduction

    The emergence and spread of community-led initiatives that grapple with sustainability challenges and social justice has been a
subject of much academic quest (Schmid et al., 2021; Kohler et al., 2019; Hossain, 2016). Organic food and renewable energy co­
operatives, recycling laboratories, digital commons, bicycle kitchens, libraries of things, intentional living communities, and
co-housing initiatives, among multiple others, can be understood and interpreted, using multiple and overlapping lenses and frames of
reference. These community-based initiatives (CBIs herein after) can be perceived as embodiments of the sustainability transition
(Khmara and Kronenberg, 2020; Henfrey et al., 2017; Kunze and Becker, 2015), as manifestations of place-based grassroots innovation
(Nicolosi et al., 2018; Seyfang and Smith, 2007) and Nowtopias (Carlson, 2014), as examples of social enterprises (Johanisova et al.,
2013) and social innovation (Baker and Mehmood, 2015), or as key drivers of the social and solidarity economy (Varvarousis et al., 2020).
The increasing need for emancipatory visions of the future, instigated by the dystopian images of the present, has further inclined
scholars to conceive CBIs as prefigurative practices or as organizational forms that anticipate a future amalgam of possibilities
(Törnberg, 2021; Levitas, 2017). In the words of Gibson-Graham (2006), prefiguration aspires to create new worlds that embody
‘not-yet futures’ through the resources of the existing world and by engaging with the micro-politics of space, time, language, body,
and emotion. Community-led initiatives that aim at organizing livelihoods and provisioning around principles of sufficiency,
socio-ecological justice, and deeper forms of democracy can be further theorized as an embodiment of the paths and pursuits of
degrowth as a subversive utopia and a type of sustainability transition (Kallis and March, 2015).



    * Corresponding author at: Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain.
      E-mail address: fsekulova@uoc.edu (F. Sekulova).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2023.100764
Received 4 October 2022; Received in revised form 21 July 2023; Accepted 15 August 2023
Available online 29 August 2023
2210-4224/© 2023 The Authors.            Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
F. Sekulova et al.                                                                   Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


    Degrowth is a pledge to critically revise the requirement for perpetual economic growth as the quintessential expression of human
achievement (Kallis et al., 2018; Demaria et al., 2013). The scholarly field explores the ways radically leaner resource and material use
in the North, along with an extensive income and wealth redistribution worldwide, could tackle global social injustice and ensure a
good life for all (Hickel, 2020). Degrowth can be further conceptualized as a plethora of pathways pointing towards global ecological
justice, all in the making, and rooted in the radical reorganization of communities and societies through acts of care for, and
compensation for past damage incurred to human and more-than-human worlds (Schmelzer et al., 2022; Treu et al., 2020; Muraca,
2012). Nonetheless, thinking about ecological sustainability and socio-political transformation without due consideration of the
processes, needs, subjectivities, and bodies involved, is bound to create oppressive and opaque structures. Degrowth-minded sus­
tainability transition thus needs to be considered utopian in a process-oriented sense (Kallis and March, 2015), as a continuous and
critical self-reflection and a strive towards greater inclusion, justice, and fairness (Anguelovski et al., 2020; Dengler and Lang, 2022). In
this light, the present article aims to contribute to the emerging literature on organizing from and for degrowth (Barlow et al., 2022;
Vandeventer and Lloveras, 2020; Hinton, 2021; Nesterova, 2020; Lloveras et al., 2018; Schmid, 2018) in zooming at the fundamental
role of care ethos in the postgrowth metamorphosis, and sustainability transition.
    Sustainability transition has been extensively theorized as goal-oriented, purposive, emerging in protected niches, and located at
the interface between technology, economics, business, markets, culture, politics, discourse, and public opinion (Geels, 2011). As
argued by Bouzarovski and Haarstad (2019) and others, however, conceiving social or grassroots innovation in the realm of the
socio-political through the language and imaginary of ‘niches’ provides but a limited reading of the relational aspects behind social
mobilization and its wider interaction with the spatial and political forces that constitute the current economic regimes (Smith and
Raven, 2012). The degrowth literature, on the other hand, theorizes transformative change as a blend of three inter-related strategies:
(i) bottom-up action, or the development of new place-based social practices and autonomous structures situated in the ‘interstices’ of
capitalism; (ii) temporary, or prolonged, revolutionary confrontations and acts of dissent; and iii) non-reformist reforms, or policies that
radically reshape statal institutions and existing economic systems (Barlow et al., 2022, p.23; Schmelzer et al., 2022). In this article, we
theorize the first ingredient of a degrowth-oriented sustainability transition - the realm of on-the-ground civic praxis and
community-led initiatives. As argued by Schmelzer et al. (2022), (p.254) while institutional changes may provide the conditions for the
flourishing, expansion, and replication of nowtopias, community organizing help us imagine, experience, and appreciate collective,
self-determined, care- and sufficiency-oriented lifestyles, inspiring thereby further mobilization for profound reforms and political
transformation.
    Against this background, over the last nine years, we have closely followed the trajectories of five CBIs in the field of food, energy,
and housing located in the province of Barcelona (Spain). These initiatives can be conceptualized as ‘islands’, or as pragmatic landings
for the seemingly abstract horizon of degrowth for a number of reasons (Schmelzer et al., 2022, Videira et al., 2014). One concerns the
convergence between their organizational aspirations and the conceptual pillars of degrowth. The organizations, for example, man­
ifested: (i) an orientation towards sufficiency and local ecological production and provisioning while taking distance from identitarian
and reactionary narratives; (ii) a preference for cooperative and commons-oriented forms of organization and management; (iii) a
focus on serving the local community with an appeal to global justice; (iv) elements of horizontal, inclusive and democratic func­
tioning. The second reason is self-identification. Over the years, CBI´s members increasingly mentioned the interpretative framework of
degrowth as their aspirational horizon.
    In order to dive deep into the meaning of ‘success’ for CBIs that embody transformative futures, we bring sustainability transition,
prefigurative politics, and degrowth scholarships in conversation with group facilitation practice and living systems theory (Escor­
ihuela, 2019), putting forward a model of organizational thriving that is strongly grounded in care ethos (Dengler and Lang, 2022).
Following Escorihuela (2019), groups are considered successful or effective when they possess and manifest the capacity to: achieve
results; sustain fluid, transparent, and inclusive organizational processes; and care for the needs of all members and stakeholders
(Escorihuela, 2019). Our article explores the resonance of this model with the realities of CBIs that prefigure degrowth, asking: In what
ways are the pillars of organizational thriving (people, processes, and results) jointly pursued, reflected, performed, and experienced by CBIs
oriented towards ecological sustainability and social justice? We furthermore delve into the grey areas, weak links, and tensions that tend
to emerge around the embodiment of such tripartite version of ‘success’, and the ways these are being addressed.
    One of the underlying premises of our research is that the means to understand the success of the CBIs that set the stage for socially
just and ecologically mindful futures requires going beyond singular and results-oriented metrics, moving onto the realm of qualitative
and non-instrumental parameters (Aiken, 2015). While the notion of success suggested here could possibly extend to other types of
organizations, we opt for building our analysis around initiatives that operate and serve the needs of their communities in a way that is
respectful of, and caring for the human and more-than-human worlds, and whose practice embody and prefigure a palette of degrowth
futures (Videira et al., 2014). To this aim below we firstly situate the discussion on how success is being interpreted in the literature on
socio-ecological transition (Section 2). Next, we outline a theoretical framework of success, or thriving, which is particularly apt for
organizing towards degrowth (Section 3). Upon presenting the methodological approach pursued in this research, Section 5 provides
an exploration of the core achievements, difficulties, and moments of friction for the CBIs in our study pool from the optics of the
framework of organizational thriving (Escorihuela, 2019). In the Discussion we unpack the key insights and trends from the preceding
section. The Conclusion then wraps-up the paper’s core findings, while situating these in the sustainability transition literature.

2. Representations and accounts of CBIs’ success in the literature

   A common yardstick for measuring, or understanding, the success of CBIs aiming at sustainability and social justice, concerns the
extent to which they reach particular objectives (De Haan et al., 2019; Aiken, 2015). These can be related to the democratization of

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                   Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


(cleaner) energy production and distribution (Mulugetta et al., 2010), achieving carbon reduction gains (Aiken, 2015), the collective
ownership of energy systems (Gunderson et al., 2018; Kunze and Becker, 2015), or more generally to the promotion of sustainable
lifestyle solutions in a way unattainable by top-down policies (Seyfang and Smith, 2007). Yet, while the desire to act upon global
socio-environmental challenges is common among CBIs’ members, valuing community action solely through the targets, and tangible
results, that it can eventually achieve, tends to produce and reproduce an instrumental logic, one that undermines and crowds out the
relational, motivational, and foundational aspects and factors that underpin the very existence of local groups (Aiken et al., 2022).
    Moreover, CBIs’ success is frequently described through quantitative benchmarks such as size, budget, members, clients or activity
span (Warbroek et al., 2019; Aiken, 2015). Resting upon measurable metrics of success for community-based initiatives may, however,
go against their very raison d’être (Smith, 2019; Celata and Coletti, 2018; Dinnie and Holstead, 2018). The initiatives labelled as
innovative and successful along such monolithic terms eventually reaffirm lock-ins within growth-based institutional structures,
creating rigidity and eventually strengthening perverse system dynamics (Antadze and Westley, 2012). As argued by Aiken (2015),
once the strive towards reaching quantitative targets becomes a central tenet of community success, belonging, togetherness and
justice tend to get side-tracked.
    Community initiatives’ achievement has also been theorized as the extent of their up-scaling and spread onto the mainstream
(Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012). CBIs are entrenched in a growth-laden socio-economic context where the achievement of visible,
material, and fast results is the routine way to accomplishment. Capitalist dynamics permeate and frame the lived realities of
sustainability-minded organizations (Feola, 2020), where competition, market-based innovation, commodification, and
credit-expansion constitute a barrier to the transformative capacity of small-scale, non-for-profit, cooperative and socially-oriented
formations (Rommel et al., 2018; Hess, 2013). While up-scaling is one of the primary channels to project influence and leverage
for socio-ecological transition, the literature on how sustainability-oriented initiatives spread out and amplify their impacts (Lam et al.,
2020) is increasingly showing that socio-political influence is not constituted only in the hierarchical trespassing of scales, and nu­
merical growth (Bouzarovski and Haarstad, 2019; Aiken et al., 2022).
    Pursuing success through the metrics of organizational growth CBIs tend to reproduce the very logics and dynamics they seek to
replace (Törnberg, 2021; Hargreaves et al., 2013; Mulgan et al., 2007). For example, when focusing primarily on expansion, groups
may eventually need to compromise their radical or socially-transformative visions (Nunes and Parker, 2021; Bergman et al., 2010;
Hielscher et al., 2011; Johanisova et al., 2013), or risk co-optation (Feola and Nunes, 2013; Hess, 2013). In the same way, while public
funding may bring opportunities for expansion and consolidation, excessive dependence on external donors tends to crowd-out ini­
tiatives’ volunteer or membership base, leading to a loss of autonomy and transformational capacity (Dinnie and Holstead, 2018;
Celata and Coletti, 2018; Aiken, 2014; Jing and Gong, 2012). This is especially the case when workload is taken up by few committed,
‘hard-pressed’, and poorly paid-staff or volunteers (Nunes and Parker, 2021; Aiken, 2015; Wells, 2011). Furthermore, scaling-up a CBI
without appreciating the so-called ‘non-scalable’, or social, aspects that form the backbone of the group, such as place-attachment,
face-to-face encounter, commitment, passion, or disappointment, may end up eroding the very mission of community initiatives
(Aiken et al., 2022). This said, pragmatic actions that ensure survival and remaining afloat need not be confounded with apolitical
stances, alignment with neoliberal approaches, or with the absence of ethical principles altogether (Nunes and Parker, 2021).
    Nonetheless, CBI’s success can also be approached in qualitative terms through the assessment of the transformative capacity of the
group across a range of features such as inclusiveness, autonomy, reflexivity, social learning and transformative leadership (Wolfram,
2016). New and diversified perspectives on CBIs’ successes have been emerging, where the quality of organizational processes and
relationality are clearly featured (Aiken et al., 2022; Grabs et al., 2016). These entail the capacity of the organization to facilitate group
communication (Polk, 2013), address conflicts and tensions (Sekulova et al., 2017; Cardona, 2010), embrace members’ needs for
community belonging and participation (de Haan et al., 2019; Feola and Nunes, 2013), and foster democratic decision-making pro­
cesses (De Haan et al., 2019; Ornetzeder and Rohracher, 2013; Seyfang and Smith, 2007). Organizational achievement has also been
conceptualized as the strength of inter-personal channels and communication networks that expand beyond the bubble of the sus­
tainability ‘converted’ (Shawki, 2013; Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012; Smith, 2011; Wells, 2011; Middlemiss and Parrish, 2010).

3. Organizational thriving: Theoretical framework

    Inspired by the capacity of living systems to self-organize Arrow et al. (2000), and later Escorihuela (2019), put forth a model of
organizational thriving where proposals for change come from anywhere in the system, and get supported, reinforced or inhibited in
cycles of positive and negative feedback. Self-organization in living systems is based on the continuous flow and management of
information and energy, in accordance with rules generated and modified through incessant cycles of interaction, where none of the
part has the power to impose rules without the agreement of the rest (Escorihuela, 2022). While human systems generate their rules for
the benefit and under the influence of a fraction of the socio-political spectrum, rather than from its entirety, and without series of
ample feedbacks, a living systems approach to organizations is particularly apt for theorizing CBIs that foreshadow degrowth futures.
Firstly, the ability of a living system to integrate its differentiated elements, so that all parts are heard, and recognized in their values
and potential complementarities, is highly instructive for groups that simultaneously strive for organizational effectiveness and
horizontality, or inclusivity. Secondly, the model foregrounds the role of care, understood as attention to people (members) and
processes, as a core feature of organizational thriving. Upon these premises, groups are considered successful, or thriving, when they
possess, embody and manifest the capacities to: (i) achieve (tangible) results; (ii) maintain and improve group functioning through
fluid, transparent and inclusive processes and organizational structures; and (iii) attend to the needs of (e.g., for participation,
belonging, recognition, affiliation, appreciation, achievement, realization, empowerment, and material security) individual group
members (Fig. 1).

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    Another relevant feature of the model is that, the capacities to achieve results, to maintain fluid and inclusive group processes, and
to attend to people’s needs, are not stand-alone, but rather intermingled in a way that each one influences, and is influenced by, the
others (represented by the three corners on Fig. 1). For example, if a CBI focuses solely on achieving its objectives without heeding to
members’ needs and processes, it will eventually be confronted with a tense relational environment, undermining long-term results.
Alternatively, if a group is primarily concerned with attending to organizational processes or individual needs, its results are likely to
stagger, putting organizational existence at stake.
    The three denominators of success are then also influenced by, and potentially influencing, the socio-political, cultural and eco­
nomic contexts in which CBIs emerge and thrive. Community initiatives tend to materialize and thrive in ‘fertile soils’, characterized by
a shared history of social organizing, values of cooperation, trust, and concern with justice and sustainability (Sekulova et al., 2017).
Some of the contextual features that help these organizations emerge and thrive in the ‘interstices of capitalism’ (Wright, 2010) have to
do with their local, cultural, and community-embeddedness (Hargreaves et al., 2013; Feola and Nunes, 2013). At the same time, the
cultural, historical, and social (micro)context of each organization feeds into its organizational dynamics, and tends to tilt the pri­
oritization of success toward one of the three verges of the triangle (results, people or processes).
    The tripartite notion of organizational success is furthermore well-placed in tying the different branches of degrowth theory
together (Demaria et al., 2013). Upon the canvas of degrowth, achieving results would involve remaining within the biophysical
boundaries of our planet through leaner and equitably distributed material throughput in a strive to move beyond uncapped profit
seeking (Schmelzer et al., 2022). Caring about processes would correspond to ensuring democratic, equitable and inclusive means of
taking decisions, while attending to differences and marginalized voices, through acts of decolonial reconstruction of oppressive re­
alities (Nirmal and Rocheleau, 2019; Zografos, 2019; Deriu, 2012; Murcara, 2012). Care for people then corresponds to ensuring
human and more-than-human well-being and thriving (Sekulova, 2014).

4. Data and methodology

    Data for this research has been collected over a period of nine years, throughout which we interviewed, participated in, and
observed five CBIs (Table 1). We aimed at exploring well-known and well-networked CBIs in the province of Barcelona, ones that are
representative of local production and provisioning along a range of sustainability axes. To this aim we applied a purposive (selective
and typical) case sampling technique (Palys, 2008) starting with one of the oldest and well-known food cooperatives in Barcelona,
where one of the authors had been participating for years. In searching for the relevant and well-established community-based ini­
tiatives in the fields of organic food, renewable energy, and co-housing we further chose two organic vegetable farms (of 3 to 4 ha
productive land each), which were particularly suitable for their historical trajectory as providers for, and enablers of, various food
cooperatives in the province. Next, we selected the (currently) largest renewable energy cooperative on the territory of Catalonia,
which was in its nascent phase in the initial stages of our research. Finally, we included a reference project in the field of housing, a
living community of about 30 people situated on the verges of Barcelona, known for its social organizing and explicit degrowth affinity.
    In the selection of study cases, we assembled a group of initiatives favouring their complementary, rather than their comparability.
We eventually had three initiatives in the food axis, one on the receiving end (a consumer coop), and two on the productive side which
were its current or past providers. The three CBIs in the domain of food were hence related. The two farms were included as one was a




                           Fig. 1. The triangle of organizational thriving (an adaptation from Arrow et al., 2000).

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                               Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


Table 1
A short description of the five CBIs studied in their (intentional or not) alignment with degrowth.
  Name                 Short description                                                       Alignment with degrowth

  Farm 1               A vegetable-based organic farm of about 3 ha land located 20 km         Local and diverse organic farms, with relatively low use of, and
                       away from Barcelona, providing grocery for food cooperatives and        reliance upon heavy machinery form the base of degrowth-inspired
                       households in Barcelona and the nearby towns. The farm is a small-      food provisioning. The provision of decent and sustainable
                       scale social enterprise launched in 2010 by two individuals with a      employment, especially for migrant workers is another key
                       long experience in the food cooperative movement. It regularly          aspiration. Conviviality, through festive forms of social organizing,
                       organizes social events for its clients on its premises.                for example is a central degrowth practice.
  Farm 2               An organic farm of about 6.5 ha located 35 km away from                 Same as above
                       Barcelona, providing grocery for cooperatives and households in the
                       province.
                       The farm is a small-scale social enterprise launched in 2000 together
                       with one of the first food cooperatives in Barcelona as a form of
                       community-supported agriculture. It is a pioneer agroecological
                       project in Catalonia, known for its socio-ecological approach,
                       activist stance and appeal to horizontality in organizing.
  Food cooperative     One of the first food cooperatives in Barcelona, launched in 2001.      The process of commoning in the field of food distribution is one of
                       The coop went down from 30 to 20 member units (2023). The CBI           the baseline proposals for local degrowth-inspired provisioning.
                       purchases weekly grocery baskets from Organic farm 1, based on          The coop opted for being an informal group of consumers who get
                       their seasonal availability, (and buys in bulk organic food             together to use their purchasing power in order to support local
                       elsewhere). It is self-organized, and members self-appoint to           organic smallholders and avert/subvert, the agro-industrial model
                       commissions taking care of food distribution, space, administration,    of food production. Making local, organic and healthy nutrition
                       and membership coordination. The CBI is located in a multicultural,     accessible and applying direct democracy principles through non-
                       centric & gentrified neighborhood.                                      for-profit organizational structures is another basic premise of
                                                                                               degrowth.
  Energy               A renewable energy consumers’ cooperative founded in 2011 in            The process of commoning for basic service provisioning is a key
     cooperative       Girona, (Catalonia) that gained 83,000 members and 120,000              tenet in degrowth organizing. A complete shift to renewable energy,
                       contracts in 10 years. This expansion has been achieved thanks to a     also used as a way to lower absolute consumption levels, is one of
                       large number of local groups, (composed of hundreds of volunteers),     the primary vehicles for achieving climate stabilization for
                       steered by a governance council and a professional team of              degrowth researchers.
                       employees. Participation of members takes place, through: an online
                       platform, an annual summer school, and (general and local groups’)
                       assemblies.
  Intentional living   A 30-member living community with productive land and social            The project combines many features and traits of degrowth-
      community        center, located in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. The project      imagined utopias, among which: self-organization, co-housing, re-
                       has been active for more than 10 years, and produces about 20% of       commoning and repurposing abandoned of buildings,
                       its vegetables, while organizing regular events that cater for the      agroecological production, high degree of sharing, political
                       socio-political needs of the metropolitan city.                         organization, and awareness raising.



pioneer project and a reference for the agroecological movement in Catalonia, and the other-relatively new, though steadily growing.
Such a coverage gave us a nuanced picture of CBIs’ thriving, and allowed for more complexity in our understanding of their trajec­
tories. To an extent we could also relate and contrast the energy with the food cooperative, which are both purchasing a “sustainable”
good together, regardless of differences in their size and organization. Having two producer, and two consumer groups gave us space
for understanding a variety of trajectories, institutional set ups, pathways, and constraints. The living community stood on its own, but
provided a highly relevant perspective (on shared/community housing) from a degrowth stance.
    We started our research in 2014 conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with founders, members, and users of the CBIs
(n=18). Questions revolved around the group’s aspirations, establishment, evolution, moments of inflection or difficulty, sense of
achievement, and overall trajectory. We triangulated findings identifying and interviewing members located at different organiza­
tional levels, and having different degree of involvement within the CBIs.
    While providing a sense of direction at the initial phases of the research, interviews alone gave us a limited glimpse of the ini­
tiatives’ realities. Hence, we extended our research with participant observation and ethnographic field work. Ethnography gave us
greater contextual depth and width, and a glimpse into less visible organizational dynamics. In practical terms, this entailed partic­
ipation in events and activities, informal conversations, and immersion in the day-to-day realities of the CBIs. Nine years later (in
2023), we went back to conducting semi-structured interviews with staff of the energy cooperative, a member of the living community,
and workers of the two organic farms and their extended network of collaborators. In these we interrogated the relevance of the three
pillars of organizational thriving for the realities of the respective organizations. We further inquired into the extent to which in­
terviewees considered their initiatives part of a degrowth-oriented transition.
    Concerning the extent to which the selected CBIs aspire at, or prefigure degrowth, in the beginning of our study we inscribed its
relevance from their functioning (democratic orientation, local ecological provisioning with a global justice appeal) and ambitions for
socio-political transformation. The transition that CBIs’ members aspired at, for example, entailed overhauling industrial food pro­
duction, scaling down mining and fossil fuel extraction, dismantling corporate forms of economic organization, while resting upon
cooperative, sufficiency-oriented, and solidarity-based structures for organizing care, production, and provisioning. While in the first
years of our research the word ’degrowth’ emerged little in our conversations, over time CBI’s members started referring more
frequently to the term. In 2023, when explicitly asked whether they perceived degrowth as the aspirational horizon of their organi­
zations, most interviewees responded affirmatively. The energy cooperative, for example, organized a session for all interested

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                         Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


members, on the relevance of degrowth for their vision and future operations, while members of the local agroecological projects saw
themselves as a part of a degrowth-oriented trend.
    Interviews were fully transcribed and coded with NVivo. Analysis was dynamic and iterative with an initial phase of data coding
using grounded theory techniques (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2000), and a number of follow-up phases when recurrent
concepts such as success, people’s needs, process, results and aspirations were brought in the research inquiry. The analytical
(interview) material has been coupled with extensive field notes from informal exchanges, activities and conversations with various
members of the initiatives.
    Certainly, the tendencies and embodiments for success listed below represent just one interpretation, or one reading, of the
fieldwork and data, largely influenced by the authors’ subjectivities and white female, middle-class, South- and East-European
positionalities. Notably, we have been building our narrative, understanding and analysis upon our experiences from within, being
members or collaborators of the food cooperative and the two farming projects. Hence our involvement with some of the CBIs was not
primarily, or only, driven by our research interests. While our subscription to the organizational goals and praxis of the initiatives has
given us a deep, internal and nuanced view of their trajectories, our analysis obviously entails a degree of normativity and subjectivity
(in terms of accentuating particular aspects of care, for example).

5. Organizational thriving in practice: Insights from the field

  Here we explore the extent to which the ‘people-processes-results’ model of organizational thriving is experienced, performed and
embodied in the studied groups, while identifying barriers, tensions and enabling factors along the way.

5.1. Attending to members’ needs

   The creation of socially just and ecologically sustainable organizational structures in an economic, or institutional context which is
neither welcoming, nor appreciative, where threats of co-optation or suspension abound, requires continuous self-strain and exertion.
The implications and significance of such continuous efforts, however, often become visible at relatively late stages, or in times of
organizational rupture and members’ burn out.
         “I exploited myself a lot in the past. You devote yourself to something you love …until one day you feel like an idiot; …you dedicate so
         much of your time and no one recognizes your work, no one pays you.” D., a member of the Energy Cooperative, (2014).
    In the early years of the Energy Cooperative, local volunteers’ groups took-up a substantial load of outreach work. When orga­
nizational resources and attention were primarily directed to achieving objectives like the expansion of contracts and renewable
energy generation capacity, however, the lasting engagement of people started to dwindle. While the physical and emotional
endeavour on the side of few overcommitted volunteers had been vital for achieving the common goals of the CBI in its launch face,
over the years members’ aspirations to contribute to a much desirable social change started to crash with their personal limits.
Whenever members’ needs for support, care, and recognition were left unattended for long this resulted in burn outs and eventual
group break-down. Moreover, the legislative changes in the energy sector which Spain started introducing in 2019, and earlier,
required large-scale administrative restructuring over very short time frames. The shift substantially augmented the administrative
burden of work, and eventually exhaustion, for the cooperative’s employees. In the words of one of the workers, “while the will to care
for each other is there, the resources for doing this are limited”.
    While the uneasy and sometimes missing balance between attending needs and reaching targets traversed all initiatives, it was most
notable for those in the agriculture sector. For the two organic farms, initiating a small-scale, locally-targeted, diverse-crop, productive
project from a scratch in a context of fierce competition with the existing agro-industrial complex has implied an exceptional and
continuous strain.
         “I still have not managed to stop working so much, after all these years (…) Persistence and resistance have a very high price, in terms of
         human exhaustion, and sacrifice”. N., founder of Farm 2 (2015).
    The exhaustion of founders and workers, however, eventually renders CBIs vulnerable to external and internal changes and shocks.
The only productive project run by women in the network of producers of Farm 2, for example, had to close down simply because its
founders became mothers. Reconciling care work with small-scale organic farming in Spain resulted impossible. Attendance to the
reproductive, mental, and bodily load and cost of such continuous strain is thus not only a baseline condition for organizational
thriving, but a factor that merits attention on its own.
    In the context of the Food Cooperative and the Living Community a common motivational factor that underpinned participation
was the need for relatedness, conviviality, and being part of a community.
         “To be part of the local coop while living in this neighbourhood increases my quality of life.… I feel very grateful for the relations with the
         people there. I feel part of the neighbourhood. Also, for the joint activist resistance that we create in this district…” X., member of the
         Food Cooperative (2014).
   Whenever the social and convivial elements and structures which held the group together and strengthened the sense of community
belonging were undermined, conflicts and membership drop-off were more common.
   An explicit recognition of attending to personal needs and limits was glaring within the Living Community. One interviewee from
the community argued that whenever achieving socio-political targets (such as organizing events, for example) started to matter more

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                 Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


than attending to members’ needs for rest, peace, and relatedness, the project was deeply unsettled. Indeed, over the last years the
project experienced one major perturbation, partly associated with the mismatch between accommodating members’ needs with
achieving socio-political goals. This disenchantment resulted in the group’s overhaul and departure of many long-term dwellers.
    Overall, evidence was ample that the CBIs’ thriving was intrinsically related to, and contingent upon, the ways care, as attention to
personal needs, got acknowledged and practiced by the entirety of the group. The distribution of care work within the CBIs was
furthermore not gender-neutral. In almost all groups, female members were the ones that fostered the culture of recognizing and
gratifying care work (understood as attention to people’s needs), by organizing spaces for reflection, for example. At times this
required that groups slow down and redirect attention from results towards the needs of those disproportionally loaded with common
tasks and feeling excluded, unprivileged or negatively affected by group dynamics.

5.2. Success as care for group processes

   When looking at the organizational dynamics of CBIs one may (mistakenly) presume that initiatives that prefigure degrowth futures
are traversed by more conflict than strictly hierarchic, growth, and profit-oriented organizations (Cunico et al., 2022). Deepening
democracy, however, necessarily goes along with amplifying the representation and heterogeneity of social actors and the diversity of
voices. This implies that differences which are normally silenced away, or cornered, in hierarchical structures surface more easily.
Below we identify three of the multiple process-oriented landmarks of success or organizational thriving that emerged in our research.

5.2.1. Honouring difference as a source of strength
    The Energy Cooperative had multiple local groups (assemblies), a governance council (decision-making body), and a professional
office consisting of employees handling daily management and technical works around the production and commercialization of
energy. The cooperative was initially conceived as a space open for, and highly dependent upon, volunteer contributions, attracting
lawyers, graphic designers, engineers, and environmental activists alike. Over time, however, participation started to wane and certain
homogeneity of profiles across all levels of governance got established.
         “The common member profile we have had for long has been: white, male, elderly, or retired, engineer” Q., member of the technical
         office of the Energy Cooperative (2023).
    The relative uniformity of profiles then implicitly imposed behavioural codes that acted as a barrier to the entry for non-male, or
non-energy-expert, members. Upon the influence of office employees with skills, knowledge, and experience in the field of horizontal
organizing, group facilitation and eco-social transition, a number of strategic decisions around the need to diversify volunteer and
membership base were taken. One of these concerned the cooperative’s language and discourse around the role and significance of
diverse knowledges, skills, and member profiles. The cooperative set-up an organizational department dedicated to expanding and
diversifying participation and community-building as one of its strategic lines of operation. It organized series of trainings and
facilitated workshops on eco-feminism, socio-ecological transition, and degrowth which attracted members and collaborators with
different profiles. As a result, the membership base of the cooperative diversified, while relationality and social-cohesion improved.
    Not all CBIs in our sample were able to address and integrate differences in visions and needs. The producers’ cooperative, which
Farm 1 formalized along with thirteen other producers from the area had a major break down a couple of years upon its launch. The
formal cooperative drew on ten-year collaboration between the local ecological farmers, and aimed at making vegetable exchange,
joint fruit ordering, and distribution between members more efficient through the employment of new facilities and staff. The
formalized cooperative, however, spent little time on building deeper forms of group cohesion, developing conflict-resolution stra­
tegies, and clarifying members’ expectations and visions right from the start. The lack of attention to communication and decision-
making processes, trust-building, and vision-aligning created an increasing rift between members, along with fears that their com­
mercial interests did not align well with the ones of the cooperative. Eventually the rupture rendered the formalized cooperative
dysfunctional, upon the closure of the centre for joint dispatching and laying off its workers.
         “In cooperatives of the kind, cohesion and mutual care between the members are the baseline. This was never acknowledged in our
         attempt to create and run a producers’ cooperative”, L. worker of Farm 1 (2023).


5.2.2. Addressing power dynamics
    The question of power transcended all groups, both implicitly and explicitly. It was sometimes manifested in the different posi­
tionalities between newer and older group members, or between those with more experience, knowledge, or eloquence than the rest.
The Food Cooperative, for example, was organized horizontally and decisions taken at a general assembly in search for consensus.
Entry was granted to anyone able to pay the weekly food basket and commit to the common tasks. Over time, however, more
experienced (mostly male) members of the Food Cooperative were taking a lot of (verbal) space in assemblies. Here, a sudden attention
to group processes, initiated by a female member, incited a subtle shift. The cooperative undertook a number of facilitated events
where critical self-reflection was encouraged and questions of rank, power, and gender justice discussed. The improved facilitation in
meetings revealed current gender and power dynamics, where existing roles and ranks were attested. This practice further involved the
adoption of a more caring approach in engaging new people right from the start through socializing, networking, and social bonding.
    Likewise, in the initial years of the Energy Cooperative, men were taking up most of the managerial positions at the technical office,
and women-the communication and secretary jobs. Over time women in the office started reclaiming gender roles in a number of ways,
and amidst increasing societal attention to gender justice, initiated series of power-and-privilege-awareness sessions, facilitated by

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                     Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


external consultants. Eventually the cooperative organized a number of workshops around the thematic of new masculinities,
developed written protocols on gender equity and harassment and started to actively promote the entry of women in its governance.
This led to substantial improvement in the representation of female members in the governance council.
   Many interviewees have also suggested that identifying power imbalances, and attending to, and learning from, minority voices,
needed to be a core organizational praxis for CBIs. In addition to impromptu meetings to address temporal crises, a great deal of the
power imbalances within the organizations required structural transformation, including the designattion of spaces for hearing those
excluded, or less outspoken.

5.2.3. Holding space for collective organizational reflexivity
    Success in process-oriented terms further implies establishing and sustaining spaces for self-reflection, difficult conversations and
continuous organizational and structural adaptation. The initial phase of the Food Cooperative, for example, was charted by enthu­
siasm and entry of numerous members with a lot of initiative. Joining the Food Coop implied commitment to: maintaining the space;
collaborating with the accounting, organizing and distributing food orders; managing communication with providers and scrutinizing
ethical consumption criteria. Over time, belonging to the coop, however started to lose traction. The increasing popularity and supply
of organic food in commercial stores marked a turning point for many food cooperatives in Barcelona, and elsewhere. This contextual
dynamic set the stage, and need, for rethinking the Food Coop. Some of its members, for example, felt they would contribute more to
society if they bought organic food from small commercial stores, and redirect the time invested in the Food Coop to social and political
mobilization. Maintenance tasks eventually started to weigh upon fewer committed members causing friction, conflict, and acceler­
ating membership loss. While the consumer group in our sample found a survival formula and remained afloat, similar dynamics forced
other cooperatives in the province of Barcelona to close down. Some of their active members, however, reflected upon the contextual
changes along with the regimes and boundaries of volunteer work, and drawing upon decades of organizational experience, started
establishing cooperative supermarkets for local ecological produce. All membership-based ecological supermarkets (with more than
100 members) that emerged in Barcelona, and nearby cities like Mataro, Granollers and Cardedeu stemmed from, and drew upon the
organizational learning experience and dissolution of previous food cooperatives.
    Organizational reflexivity has been fundamental for Farm 2, now existing for more than twenty years. Its foundational times were
marked by the application of horizontality and direct democracy, where the voices of experienced workers had an equal weight with
the ones of new entries. Throughout the years, however, the time invested in horizontal organizational process slowed down pro­
ductive work, making the farm prone to multiple trial-and-errors. Such dynamics raised the cost of production, generating complaints
among food cooperatives and putting the economic viability of the project at stake. The strategy to keep the project alive and thriving,
sought through a number of facilitated sessions, was to acknowledge the existence of ranks associated with the degree of experience,
project implication and economic responsibility. These processes led to organizational restructuring. Providing experienced leaders
with more space and decision-making power improved organizational effectiveness, but perpetuated and locked-in their continuous
self-exertion, creating further complexity within the group.
    The Energy coop, on the other hand, required fast and efficient decision-making which, in the initial years of its existence,
sometimes clashed with the slower and more reflective pace or sometimes more radical visions of local groups. Tensions also emerged
between the different organizational levers, such as the governance body (council) and the technical office. Balancing between hor­
izontality and verticality is perhaps one of the most common hurdles for CBIs with an appeal to horizontality, especially when they
enter a phase of expansion. Bringing the conflicting sides of the organization together in a space where experiences, frustrations, roles,
and positionalities can be safely expressed has shown to be fundamental here. Developing authentic mutual understanding, however,
required time and persistence, attention to multiple subjectivities, and addressing questions of power, privilege, and intersectional
vulnerabilities, across gender, class, and ethnicity among the rest.
    Moreover, despite its huge success as one of the first cooperatives that sell renewable energy, the organization came under severe
financial pressure associated with the price hikes in the context of the war in Ukraine. Overtime its relatively accessible energy-
provisioning service became less economically competitive especially as the largest energy companies in Spain started to offer
100% renewable contracts, and sometimes at lower prices. The changing contextual regime made members and employees reflect
profoundly upon the CBI’s role, and increasingly appreciate and acknowledge the value of its cooperative structure, personalized
service, social base, and mission. In view of the harsher market competition, members realized that the major difference and advance
of the cooperative (in comparison with other commercial providers) was its pledge for socio-ecological transition and social justice,
manifested in its educational outreach and critical reflection.
         “The Energy Cooperative as a tool for social transformation needs to continuously question its role and mission (…)We cannot survive
         and grow without valuing and putting forth our mission as a transformation and transition project, having a social base and an appeal to
         diversity”, X a worker of the Energy Cooperative (2023).
    We have seen above that ignoring the need for group cohesion and reflexivity, or for transparent and inclusive communication,
could place CBIs’ existence at stake. The success, or thriving, of the groups we engaged with, was also driven by their organizational
reflexivity and capacity to voice and address oppressive dynamics (associated with ranks and privilege), while making sure that the
voices of those overworked, excluded, or negatively affected by certain group processes, have been expressed, heard, shared, and taken
into consideration in decision-making and transformation processes.




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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                   Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


5.3. Success as achieving results

5.3.1. Making alternative provisioning possible
    Most of the CBIs we engaged with were facing huge administrative workload, involving certification, permits, taxation, inspections,
audits, along with fierce market competition with either large-scale organic producers and retailers, or giant energy enterprises. Many
informants thus saw success as simply ‘being there’, and resisting take-over by hostile socio-political and economic arrangements, and
henceforth making an alternative mode of provisioning possible amidst mass industrial productive structures. Bent by mounting
external pressures and members’ burn out, what respondents often valued was their initiatives’ ‘existence’. As argued by a founder of
Farm 2: “If you ask me about the key to success, I will talk to you about the key to resistance”.
    Consequently, in a context of harsh market pressures, the basic means to resist required economic sustainability and solvency. In
view of the heavy regulatory and material barriers in the energy sector (Pinker et al., 2020), solvency and economic consolidation for
the Energy Cooperative implied that employees had their salaries paid while generating sufficiently large financial buffers to absorb for
unpaid bills and generate the mandatory volume of liquid cash, which with the war in Ukraine swelled from 2 to 15 million Euro. In
view of the sudden external shock associated with the higher liquidity requirement, the cooperative could maintain its foundational
ethics, resist, and remain afloat thanks to its cooperative structure, network of collaborators and support by ethical finance.
    The struggle to remain alive was also present in the Food Cooperative, located in a centric neighbourhood, with an excessive tourist
exposure, gentrification trends, and declining numbers of long-term residents. Here, the maintenance of a physical space of encounter
based on cooperation and mutuality around ecological food production and distribution was seen as a main accomplishment.
         “Actually, the Food Coop is an example that works because it is kept small (…) because of the way we work and organize ourselves.
         There is not so much money involved, nor do we make money out of being part. These are some of the fundamental issues that make it
         successful…These small initiatives that are local and grass-roots are examples of projects to learn from…” X., member of the Food
         Cooperative (2015).


5.3.2. Growth in members, networks, replication and influence
    It might seem counterintuitive to pursue growth in the context of initiatives that prefigure degrowth. Yet organizational growth has
meant influence, popularity and political leverage for the modes of provisioning that align with notions of socio-ecological justice
(Kunze and Becker, 2015). A number of interviewees perceived a subversive touch in the growth of sustainable cooperative food and
electricity production/retail for shifting sales away from corporate economic structures. Cunico et al. (2022) for example, argue that if
degrowth-inspired cooperatives do not reach certain size they may end up unviable in the long term. Nonetheless, after reaching a
certain threshold size, in-build dynamics such as orientation towards the local scale, sufficiency and democracy tend to limit CBI’s
organizational growth. Indeed, a number of energy communities in the UK have deliberately decided to limit their expansion due to the
time, stress, resources, and disconnection from the local context and social base that growth might entail (Hobson et al., 2016).
    Such dynamics were somewhat present in the Energy Cooperative. One of its key organizational objectives in 2014 was to reach
100,000 contracts and 100% own generation of the renewable energy sold. A member of the governance council at that time shared
that: “The key success has been our growth in such a short time, without dying along the way… the first year we had 1200 members, in the
second 5000, in the third 12,000…”. Nine years later the cooperative reached 83.000 members and 120.000 contracts amidst null state
support and multiple bureaucratic hurdles. Interviewees attributed the initial membership growth to the relatively low pricing of the
energy sold by the cooperative, driven by the tiny margin between the purchase price obtained at the general market and what
members were charged for. Growth in contracts further meant that more funds got invested in own generation, influencing the total
energy mix of the country, and cracking existing oligopolies. Over time, however, the growth started to generate a number of hurdles.
In the context of the volatile energy prices in 2022, the cooperative had to cease signing new contracts. Amidst continuously rising
energy prices (and energy insecurity in general), growth simply meant that the cooperative could not have the liquidity to supply all
the energy demanded and contracted over the next year.
         “Our growth is a debate and a tension that we will never resolve. …. It is, however, this very tension between growth and internal
         communication and care, that is helping us go forward… Unless we perceive and appreciate the learning experience associated with the
         conversations generated by this tension, we are losing our time….”, L., worker of the Energy Cooperative (2023).
     Reaching a “right” size, one that is sufficiently large to pay the costs, and sufficiently small to manage production in socially and
environmentally considerate ways, has also been key for the existence of the two organic farms. Both of them started producing for
about 40 households, and gradually grew by providing for more groups and households (reaching a production of 1 tone of vegetables
p/week in the case of Farm 1). The two farms’ survival and growth, however, has been directly dependent on their efficiency and
capacity to cooperate and network with other producers. This is the reason why both farms contributed to the creation of networks of
producers that exchanged vegetables, ordered, and dispatched together. Such practice allowed each farm to provide a larger food offer
with a local socio-ecological stamp and eventually serve more people, while cutting on transport costs and emissions, and making their
projects more visible and enduring.
     Other informants saw replication as an equally important achievement. For example, the Energy Cooperative’s model has been
replicated by 12 energy initiatives across Spain, which adopted its organizational blueprints, while adjusted to the specificities of local
geographies. Likewise, up until 2013–2015 food cooperatives in the city of Barcelona tended to replicate, rather than grow. The Food
Cooperative did not contemplate growing beyond 30 household units, and when a sufficiently large pool of people got on its waiting
list (of future members), it facilitated the establishment of new consumer groups, transferring know-how, and contacts. In the same

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                      Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


fashion, the Living Community experience and practices inspired the start of multiple other intentional communities across Catalonia.
According to informants such a replication has facilitated socio-ecological mobilization and transition across different geographies.

5.3.3. Fostering a culture of civic empowerment for an ecological and socio-political transition
   A number of interviewees were seemingly coming to terms with what they perceived as the limits of their initiatives to challenge
the dominant industrialized model of provisioning, and aspired to direct more attention towards awareness raising and political
mobilization. Several informants saw the existences of the CBIs as springboards for mutual learning, cooperation, and socio-political
mobilization. Participation was perceived as an immersion into a culture of political reflection, and getting hands-on experience with
the praxis of collective and horizontal mobilization around issues of agroecology, feminism, and postgrowth.
         “To justify your produce, you need politics and awareness-raising. We have had to do a lot of education to explain that what we offer is
         not just ‘organic vegetables’, but the production, or generation, of social and relational value, and of a local economy”. C. a farmer,
         member of the network of producers of Farm 2 (2023).
    Likewise, the birth of the Energy Cooperative, for example, was facilitated by the formation of local groups that espoused and
disseminated its ideas in various public fora. For some interviewees, one of the biggest achievements of this cooperative was the local
groups’ capacity to debate and defend an alternative, radical and justice-oriented energy model. Others argued that the formation of
the Energy Cooperative brought people together in a nurturing and stimulating space of learning and political organizing, beyond what
is required for running the initiative. In its early years, the Food Cooperative members also aspired at contributing to the socio-political
and ecological struggles around touristification, housing rights, and gentrification at the level of the neighbourhood. One successful
action that informants frequently pointed out was the organization of annual multi-ethnic football tournaments in collaboration with
immigrant associations. However, engaging with social and political struggles required time and energy, which a decreasing fraction of
the food and energy cooperatives’ members were able to afford. Over time, the CBIs had less capacity to participate in, and contribute
to neighbourhood struggles or political mobilization.
         “When we started off as ecological farmers, many of us were driven by the desire to change the world. I have always argued that for me
         being a small local ecological farmer is a kind of political activism. For example, I have 100 households that do not buy vegetables at
         Carrefour… But the agriculture profession is smashing you, and you end up burned out. If on top of that you have assemblies, and
         political activism you just collapse. So, you eventually decide to be ‘only’ a farmer…” C. a member of the network of producers of Farm 2
         (2023).
    While balancing between resistance, existence, growth and contribution to broader socio-political struggles might seem doable,
evidence shows that these goals tend to walk uneasy together within the same organizations, if not even undermining each other. Some
initiatives got forced to focus on survival, slowing down on public participation and social mobilization. In turn, such twists might be
fertile for reinventing organizational expressions (as in the case of the Energy Cooperative) and the paths to wider and radical socio-
political transformation.

6. Discussion: rethinking success for community-based initiatives that prefigure degrowth futures

    The first observation from the earlier section is that the three edges of the triangle of organizational thriving (the achievement of
results and attending to members’ needs and group processes) were manifested, enacted, and experienced differently in all CBIs. While
achieving results was explicitly recognized and pursued by each group, the latter two aspects of success were somewhat obscure.
Caring about processes implied that the information and resources that traversed each group were regulated well and that task-
distribution was equitable and effective, while decisions taken in view of differences in visions, positionalities and subjectivities. In
turn, care for members’ needs required recognizing and honouring personal limits and the multiplicity of personal motivations and
life-circumstances that framed participation and membership. The edge of the triangle (Fig. 1) associated with members’ needs and
limits, was least attended and performed. This said, and far from reinvigorating the strong hold of individualism in Western societies,
we have seen that by being aware of members’ fatigue, burn out, needs, and limits, CBIs were in a better position to achieve their long-
term ambition and to thrive altogether. As per processes, we saw that the vitality of many initiatives sprang from their capacity to
learn, adapt and transform, which was materialized when they could attend to the “invisible”, and the “invisibilized” tensions, or
members. When the organizational culture and place-based embeddedness of groups allowed for hidden dynamics to surface in ‘safe
spaces’, they discovered and manifested versatile, apt, and adaptive responses to the changing socio-economic and political realities.
This however required time for reflection, search and confusion, slowing pace, and being less ferrous about reaching set goals at all
costs.
    Care, as the line that connects and underpins the two bottom edges of the triangle (Fig. 1) was the fundamental ingredient to
organizational thriving. It was the baseline ‘texture’ that interwove the three dimensions of success into one interconnected, symbiotic
and dynamic whole, meaning that attention to people’s needs and group processes formed the basis from which results unfolded.
Stated differently, results for CBIs with an appeal to sustainability and degrowth were hard to achieve and sustain without considering
needs and processes, hence reproductive and care work (Mies, 1997).
    Second, and just like in living systems (Escorihuela, 2019), the results-people-process triangle does not suggest a hierarchic
structure, or a superior dimension of, success. In each group success was a unique, rather than a proportional, or symmetric, mix
between the different axes. The three edges of thriving were interrelated, but did not always come easily together, especially when the
resources and time (for care, conviviality, and communication) were limited. We furthermore saw that maintaining an equilibrium, or

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                      Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


dedicating an equal share of effort towards results, needs, and processes was a colossal task. On some occasions, focusing mainly on the
pursuit of tangible and instrumental results drew energy away from building a social base, trust, and cohesion, which eventually
debilitated the initiative and rendered it dysfunctional. In other cases, process-oriented measures like diversifying member profiles,
language and discourses, and attending to power dynamics at various levels, helped the organization remain afloat and eventually
thrive. Moreover, the relevance of attending to human needs and organizational processes often got visible in times of inflection,
difficulty, or crisis. Organizations are dynamic, living systems where balancing points are temporal, and discrepancies could become
fertile if carefully unfolded (Sekulova et al., 2017). As argued by a worker of the Energy Cooperative, “We live in the constant tension
between the three edges…and it is not the resolution of this tension, but the dialogues that we have around these which help us advance”.
    Third, the question of who provided the care for the groups’ processes and members, and the ways caretakers’ roles were reshuffled
over time (Kotsila et al., 2020) was pertinent to all CBIs. The acts of identifying, and acting upon tensions and exclusion, or addressing
power dynamics were mostly gendered, or performed by women. Placing ‘care’ for people and organizational processes as a strategic
element of organizational success, may hence not only contribute to organizational thriving, but do justice to those overwhelmingly
dedicated to reproductive work (Mies, 1997).
    One may further ask whether these initiatives have actually contributed much to a justice-tuned sustainability, given their largely
middle-class appeal (Argüelles et al., 2017). Reviewing community-energy projects across Germany Rommel et al. (2018) argue that
while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models, there is little evidence of a general
change in attitudes towards techno-fixes, lower consumption modes, or social justice. These findings actually illustrate how a single
metrics of success, such as upscaling renewable energy generation, can hardly trigger shifts across the economic system, unless
grounded in care ethos, and hence accompanied by actions directed at diversifying membership and reflecting upon inclusion,
privilege, and power in CBIs and beyond.
    In the preceding analysis we also noted the heavy semantic load of ‘success’ as a notion and a term. Success in sustainability
transition and wider literature is frequently attached to an orthodox set of ideas associated with the achievement of quantifiable
results, or organizational growth. Hence, why talking about success at all? As one of the founders of Farm 1 shared, …"success is a
terrible word. I would never use it beyond the day-to-day little successes, it reminds me so much of business-as-usual. Success as a milestone does
not work for us." While we prefer the term ‘thriving’ to ‘success’, our intention is to shuffle and extend the very connotation of the latter
term. Researchers, planners and policy-makers engaging with sustainability transition need to acknowledge that ‘success’ is not only
nested in the realization of tangible results but in dealing with the needs of members and the quality of their relatedness, commu­
nication, and decision-making. Organizing towards degrowth needs the time and space for unfolding internal group processes and the
attendance to participants’ needs, even if this seemingly implies placing the search for tangible results on hold. In other words, the
ethos and performance of care need to be factored in as a lever of, or a proxy for, degrowth organizing.

7. Conclusion

    We have argued above that while reaching targets is undoubtedly essential for CBIs that embody and prefigure degrowth, eval­
uating organizations solely through the lens of achieving tangible results reproduce outdated, productivist, and deeply exploitative
logics, even if subscribing to a sustainability jargon (Büchs and Koch, 2019). Care for members’ needs and organizational processes is
not a routine benchmark of ‘success’ in the sustainability transition literature, though clearly recognized as such in various strands of
feminist writing (Kotsila et al., 2020; Mountz et al., 2015). In this vein, we have conceptualized CBIs as living systems, whose thriving
is premised upon their simultaneous achievement of results and performance of care for members and organizational processes (such
as communication, negotiation, conflict-resolution, and decision-making).
    Upon nine years of engagement with CBIs in the province of Barcelona, we saw a great diversity in the ways that results-oriented
approaches to success were experienced and manifested: from the very existence of socially and ecologically mindful alternatives to
industrial capitalist provisioning, to their socio-political influence, spread, leverage, and outreach. The needs and process-oriented
perceptions and manifestations of success, or thriving, were, however, less explicit and, at times, harder to concurrently accomplish.
    Our findings demonstrate that ‘care’ is a means, and a landmark, of organizational thriving and degrowth organizing. While
attaining visible results is fundamental for organizational existence, missing on the intangible aspects that ensure the effective
functioning and reproduction of organizations may undermine their transformational potential and long-term survival. The initiatives
that could welcome a diversity of voices and hold spaces for collective organizational reflexivity, while ensuring that the voices of
those excluded and disproportionally loaded with common tasks were taken into consideration, managed to remain afloat in times of
difficulty and to thrive over time. Likewise, attending to members’ needs formed the backbone of the CBI’s capacity to survive and
achieve results. Nonetheless, this was the least visible and performed edge of success, and the one recognized most frequently in times
of crises, member burn-outs, and group break-downs.
    That said, attending to individual needs and organizational processes is a tough quest, or a privilege, as it requires redirecting
energy and time away from immediate survival. Community-led initiatives are confronted with mounting socio-economic pressures of
a neoliberal productive system and cannot easily afford to slow down and attend to internal processes and people’s needs. Ingenuity
may thus lie in imperfectly and creatively manoeuvring between and beyond the interstices of capitalism, within the accidental,
imperfect, and the imminent space of daily realities and reconstructions. Organizational thriving lies not in a fixed or given formula,
but in the continuous, unique, situated and careful navigation of the tension between achieving results and attending to members’
needs, amidst effective organizational processes.
    We explored the five organizational experiences as unique and geographically bounded, or determined. In other words, the cultural
and socio-political landscape of the five CBIs has left a strong imprint on our findings. That said, looking at the wider literature, it may

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F. Sekulova et al.                                                                                       Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 48 (2023) 100764


be the case that the trends identified above-namely that downplaying care is likely to block organizational thriving in self-organized
communities striving at sustainability-are not unique for the South European geographies (Cunico et al., 2022; Aiken et al., 2022;
Kunze and Becker, 2015).
    Finally, just as for each CBI ‘success’ was a unique, rather than evenly proportional, mix between results, needs and processes, the
biophysical, anthropological, cultural, psychological, and political roots of degrowth thought come together, embrace, support, and
build upon each other (Demaria et al., 2013). Nonetheless, the central tenets of degrowth, might end up being a risky undertaking
without considering the multiple subjectivities and personal needs entailed in the envisioned transition, or without enhancing and
practicing inclusive, decolonial, deeply democratic, and emancipatory organizational processes (Nirmal and Rocheleau, 2019). Un­
doubtedly, sustainability transitions and its degrowth strand require strategic action along multiple levers of social order (Barlow et al.,
2022). Yet, such transformation needs to be accompanied with acts that cultivate the capacity to engage with self-inquiry as a means of
incarnating a reflexive, care-based, and care-full organizational culture (Dengler and Lang, 2022), one that is slightly less troubled with
visible achievement, and more concerned with the reproductive base of the desirable social change. In other words, organizing towards
degrowth, or radical political transformation, requires that care (for group processes and the needs of those who take part, or are
impacted and concerned) is not only theorized, but actually foregrounded, embodied and hardwired at the level of the praxis.

Declaration of Competing Interest

    The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing
interests:
    Isabelle Anguelovski reports financial support was provided by the European Commission, FP7 framework, TESS project, the ERC
Starting Grant Greenlulus (GA678034), the María de Maeztu Programme for Units of Excellence of the Spanish Ministry of Science and
Innovation (CEX2019-000940-M). Filka Sekulova reports financial support was provided by Spanish Ministry of Science and Inno­
vation, (Overtourism in Spanish Coastal Destinations), the Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe through the COOLSCHOOLS
project and the 2021 SGR 00975 project funded by the Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Lucía
Argüelles reports financial support was provided by the JdC incorporacion fellowship IJC2020-045101-I.

Data availability

    Data will be made available on request.



Acknowledgments

  The authors would like to express their gratitude to four anonymous reviewers for valuable comments, criticisms and suggestions
which have accompanied the evolution of the manuscript, and substantially strengthened its quality.

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