["British Journal of Management, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nEfficiency is a pervasive yet insufficiently challenged managerial principle and an integral part of business school academia. However, while there is compelling evidence that efficiency gains can have severe undesirable social and ecological consequences that reduce overall welfare both in terms of well‐being and natural resources, business school academsia remains ill‐equipped to adequately understand the origins of these consequences. Furthermore, management education is limited in its critical thinking about potential alternative organizing principles to efficiency. In this conceptual paper, we mobilize literature from resource economics and the so‐called ʻrebound effect' to show how and where efficiency can produce unintended harmful consequences. We illustrate this dynamic through two prominent cases where efficiency principles are particularly problematic: eco‐efficiency and sustainability, as well as digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI). We then explore why efficiency continues to dominate business school academia despite its adverse effects, drawing on the notion of ignorance to explain how dynamics of segmentation, justification and valuation sustain its persistence. Finally, we use a performativity perspective to argue how a sufficiency‐based approach as an alternative and complementary organizing principle can come into being to counter the dominance of efficiency. Our aim is to help reorient management education toward a more desirable, socially attuned and ecologically responsible future.\n"]