Beyond Growth: Designing Post-Growth Management Frameworks for Organizational Sustainability in Cultural and Creative Industries within Smart City Ecosystems

Summary

Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) operate in VUCA environments, facing funding declines, digital-green transition challenges, and post-COVID disruptions. Embedded in smart city ecosystems, they act as socio-technical nodes linking technology, governance, and cultural vibrancy. This PhD project adopts an interdisciplinary approach, integrating management theory, systems thinking, urban innovation, and sustainability studies to design a Post-Growth Management (PoGroM) framework. Tested in Nordic-Baltic smart cities, the framework aligns organizational and city-level indicators to foster resilience, participatory governance, and well-being beyond GDP growth. By bridging cultural policy, technological infrastructure, and ecological priorities, the research redefines sustainabilit...