The negative effects of the pursuit of continuous economic growth are increasingly being recognized. Environmental distress, resource scarcity, pollution and climate change are all threats to the whole of humanity. Despite all these problems, organizations do not prioritize environmental issues, which remain, in most cases, secondary to profit-seeking strategies. All over the world the activities of many organizations are based on a “growth” paradigm which is largely accepted independently of the level of national economic development. As a result, the growth paradigm is not contested in most organizational and management research (Asara et al., 2013).Changes have taken place in the last decades concerning the environmental protection, however we will discuss how previous industrial practices and institutional complementarities are difficult to reverse. When eco-efficiency processes are implemented and disseminated, they are likely to encountering significant resistance. Degrowth will be rather difficult to achieve, possibly even being reversed due to immediate social problems associated with the scaling back of industrial production. This paper attempts to shed light on the complexity of the issues involved when industrial sectors in emerging markets face the unavoidable need to deal with issues of degrowth and sustainability.