Sufficiency across organizational boundaries: A social practice theory analysis of employee work-life interventions

Sufficiency is increasingly recognized as a critical sustainability strategy that reduces overconsumption and overproduction by reshaping everyday practices. While most research in sufficiency-oriented business has examined how companies encourage customers to adopt sufficiency through products and marketing, the everyday practices of employees have received far less attention. Yet workplaces are powerful arenas where sufficiency can be cultivated and potentially carried into private life, while personal routines can, in turn, inspire organizational initiatives. Building on these interrelations, this study draws on the Green Work-Life Balance framework to design and implement an experiential, group-based intervention with 20 young employees. Using Social Practice Theory as our analytical lens, we analysed semi-structured interviews and focus groups to examine how sufficiency practices and workplace initiatives evolved across work and private domains. We found that sufficiency-oriented practices became integrated into employees’ daily routines in both private and work contexts, including nutrition, mobility, energy use and consumption. Experiences from personal sufficiency practices were also translated into broader sufficiency-oriented workplace initiatives. This study contributes to sufficiency business research by shifting the focus from consumer behaviour to employees’ internal practices, and by demonstrating how sufficiency can take root inside companies that are sustainability-oriented but not explicitly sufficiency-focused. It also advances Social Practice Theory by offering a processual account of cross-domain practice change. The study highlights how companies can unlock latent capacities for sufficiency, opening pathways that may pave the way for broader organizational and societal transitions toward sufficiency.