Size Versus Sustainability: Environmental, Social, and Competitive Diseconomies of Scale

Assumptions of growth and an appreciation of the economies which can be achieved through large scale are deeply embedded in the history of management thought. While events of the 1970s and 1980s began to expose and challenge some of these growth assumptions, little systematic attention has been given to articulating the diseconomies associated with growth and large scale. This paper examines the concept of diseconomies of scale, explores its manifestation in several streams of literature (environmental, social, and competitive), and concludes by suggesting an alternative “more sustain‐able” model of development.