From organizations as systems of ocean destruction to organizations as systems of ocean thriving

Héloïse Berkowitz, 2023. From organizations as systems of ocean destruction to organizations as systems of ocean thriving. Business and Society Review, in press, 25 pages.

Abstract
Despite growing awareness around human impacts on marine ecosystems, little action is taken to reduce the negative effects of organizations on the ocean, thus increasing risks of global collapse. In this paper, I argue that organizations act as systems of ocean destruction, and I explore how to operate a shift to organizations as systems of ocean conservation and thriving, enabling human-ocean socio-ecological coviability. To do so, I analyze the organizational affordances of the ocean: incommensurability, open access and complex property regimes, structural domination by humans and land, perceived inexhaustibility and cognitive distance. Then, based on the transdisciplinary analysis of mechanisms of ocean destruction, I discuss the constitution of ocean negative commons and the zombification process of the ocean. Lastly, I suggest alternative organizing principles that would allow to manage these commons and transform organizations to reconnect them with the ocean: degrowth, total responsibility, full cost allocation, ocean equity, and adaptive, place-based comanagement.

Keywords
Sustainable Ocean, Eco-centric Approach, Ocean Negative Commons, Ocean Equity, Ocean Governance