Management facing the Anthropocene: the ethical necessity of rethinking capitalism[Le management face à l'anthropocène : de la nécessité éthique de repenser le capitalisme]

It has now been almost 50 years (Meadows Report, 1972) that governments have known that the post-war path of infinite economic growth – the thirty glorious years – is an ecological dead end – and therefore human; that IPCC reports have been accumulating since 1990 without other economic policies being implemented. The accumulation of natural disasters and, more recently, the war in Ukraine and its consequences (rise in the price of energy and raw materials), lead us to consider that the concept of "sobriety" is no longer an obscene word; it should be taken seriously with all the consequences it brings with it in the managerial sphere: what is the meaning of growth for a company? What does it mean to be efficient? And more broadly, what is the social function of managerial action in a world whose fundamentals must be revised: relationship to living things and nature, scarcity of natural and energy resources, increased natural risks, etc.?