TY - JOUR

T1 - Developing sufficiency-oriented offerings for clothing users

T2 - Business approaches to support consumption reduction

AU - Freudenreich, Birte

AU - Schaltegger, Stefan

PY - 2020/2/20

Y1 - 2020/2/20

N2 - The clothing industry’s negative social and ecological impacts have been discussed for decades, both in academia and in mainstream media. As solutions, the existing management and supply chain research literature has emphasized eco-efficiency in production, recycling, and the use of sustainable materials. However, against the backdrop of rising consumption levels, these approaches have not achieved an overall reduction in the undesired social and environmental impacts. The sufficiency approach addresses this issue and aims to reduce the total amount of clothing that is produced, used and discarded. This consumer perspective is discussed as a potentially very effective sustainability approach, but has been neglected in the management literature relating to the clothing sector. Although the sufficiency approach is often seen to contradict business goals, recent developments of service- and sharing-oriented businesses indicate that sufficiency may actually inspire the development of new business opportunities. To address this research gap, this conceptual paper builds on a generic sufficiency management concept and incorporates ideas from the clothing-specific ‘slow fashion’ literature. It proposes a framework for sufficiency-oriented business offerings and investigates related management approaches for companies aiming to reduce social and environmental problems in the clothing sector.

AB - The clothing industry’s negative social and ecological impacts have been discussed for decades, both in academia and in mainstream media. As solutions, the existing management and supply chain research literature has emphasized eco-efficiency in production, recycling, and the use of sustainable materials. However, against the backdrop of rising consumption levels, these approaches have not achieved an overall reduction in the undesired social and environmental impacts. The sufficiency approach addresses this issue and aims to reduce the total amount of clothing that is produced, used and discarded. This consumer perspective is discussed as a potentially very effective sustainability approach, but has been neglected in the management literature relating to the clothing sector. Although the sufficiency approach is often seen to contradict business goals, recent developments of service- and sharing-oriented businesses indicate that sufficiency may actually inspire the development of new business opportunities. To address this research gap, this conceptual paper builds on a generic sufficiency management concept and incorporates ideas from the clothing-specific ‘slow fashion’ literature. It proposes a framework for sufficiency-oriented business offerings and investigates related management approaches for companies aiming to reduce social and environmental problems in the clothing sector.

KW - Sustainability sciences, Management & Economics

KW - Sufficiency

KW - Sustainable production

KW - Sustainable consumption

KW - Clothing

KW - Sustainability management

KW - Slow fashion

KW - Sufficiency

KW - Sustainable production

KW - Sustainable consumption

KW - Sustainability management

KW - Slow fashion

U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119589

DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.119589

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 247

JO - Journal of Cleaner Production

JF - Journal of Cleaner Production

SN - 0959-6526

M1 - 119589

ER -