TSElosophers’ meeting 19.10.2026

Participants:  Albrecht Becker, Niina Hakala, Annika Hasselblad, Samu Kantola, Anniina Kinnunen, Kari Lukka, Mia Salo, Milla Unkila, Kaisa Vuorio

Reading:

Unkila, Milla (2027). The future of firms in alternative economic systems. Draft for a book chapter in: Leadership for Biodiversity – Towards Nature-Respectful Futures. (Routledge) 

Background and summary of the article 

During our October meeting, we discussed the almost final draft of Milla Unkila’s forthcoming book chapter, ‘The Future of Firms in Alternative Economic Systems’. In this chapter, Milla explores how the nature of firms might change in economic systems no longer driven by the pursuit of growth and profit. By examining the different dimensions and mechanisms of economic systems and considering how the familiar components of business models might operate under different arrangements, she asks whether firms could use and maintain their capacity to organize collective action to serve the needs of people and the planet.

This time, our discussion took a slightly different form, as the author was one of our own TSElosophers. The meeting unfolded through a series of comments and reactions from fellow members, to which Milla offered further reflections. The following brings together some of the comments and questions raised during the meeting, from which several lines of thought emerged.

Discussion

TSElosophers found the chapter an inspiring invitation to rethink some of the sacrosanct assumptions of our economic system, particularly the imperative of economic growth and the faith in its ability to resolve the ecological crisis, as reflected in the so-far unfulfilled promises of green growth. Yet, our discussion soon turned from imagining alternative economic arrangements to the messy realities of what it would take to bring such visions into existence. Who exactly is the ‘we’ being called upon to stop confusing economic goals with the tools used to achieve them? What should be done differently, by whom, and how?

These concerns became more concrete as we considered the governance and managerial arrangements that shape how firms actually operate. After all, there are already various forms of organization and ownership. It was noted how even organizations without conventional shareholders are not free from the pressures and imperatives of the prevailing economic system. Nor would simply moving from private to public ownership necessarily resolve the organizational challenges of addressing complex geographically specific ecological and social issues. The possibility of nationalizing housing companies provided an interesting example: while public ownership might seem a way to address social needs and democratize organizing, it would not, in itself, guarantee better management or more equitable outcomes.

This brought us back to questions of institutions, regulation and legal arrangements, whose absence from the chapter was noted. What would democratic institutions look like in alternative economic systems? How should we understand the distinction between centralized and decentralized governance? By remaining largely at the level of economic theory and the theory of the firm, the chapter left open the question of where we might actually intervene to reconfigure the systems within which firms operate and form a critical node of. For instance, if corporate and contract law, including legal protections for investors, shape what firms can and cannot do, might zooming into these arrangements offer a more concrete way forward than simply calling for different organizational purposes or logics of value creation? In her comments Milla, however, noted that the possibilities of intervention were lacking more or less deliberately as one of the driving ideas of the chapter was to highlight the scale and scope of changes necessary for the firms to function within a non-growth oriented economy – the distance between what is theoretically logically possible and in practice doable is in her view somewhat impossible to span.

Finally, the chapter’s critique of money as a primary means of organizing economic life provoked both interest and critical questions. If we move beyond the primacy of financial value or money as a means of coordination and exchange, what would motivate actors with differing interests and values to work towards a common good? The Soviet Union was mentioned as a possible example of the difficulties of sustaining collective action in the absence of financial incentives. Does motivation to collaborate need extrinsic incentives or could human collaboration emerge as intrinsically driven process?

Underlying these different threads was a question about what drives human behaviour and how our values and relationships are formed in the first place. To what extent might economic assumptions about self-interested and greedy individuals themselves be performative, helping to produce the very behaviours they describe? And have these ideas become so influential precisely because they resonate with certain aspects of human behaviour? Such questions seemed difficult to address without considering the social fabric that connects us and shapes our values and actions.

Towards the end, we found ourselves returning to the familiar realization that we live in a world shaped by someone else’s visions and ideas, originating in other times and places, yet so deeply woven into our everyday lives that notions such as economic growth seem natural and inevitable. What, then, might be the felicity conditions for other visions of the firm and the economy to become equally real?