We are excited to welcome Lampros Lamprinakis for a talk. In his talk, “Cooperatives as Naturally Embedded Organizations: Lessons for Democratic Governance, Resilience, and Participatory Transformation in Digitalized Governance Systems and Beyond”, he explores how cooperatives function as participatory, human-centered governance models that embed ethical business practices, foster organizational resilience through cognitive and institutional adaptation, and navigate policy shifts - parallels that extend to digital platforms, welfare technologies, and sustainable innovation in public and civil society contexts. Lampros has a diverse background across countries and industries, and holds a position as a research scientist at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research. His recent work builds on previous research on industrial organization, cognitive dissonance, and mental frames to explore circular business practices, sustainable value chains and up/re-cycling, through mixed methods.

What really differentiates cooperatives (coops) from other organizational forms (e.g., volunteer organizations, non-profits, Investor-Owned-Firms/IOFs, etc.), and how these differences manifest themselves in terms of strategy and conduct? How embeddedness à la Polanyi fits with the coop organizational structure and what it entails for coop resilience, but also market performance and communities? We will also explore how core insights from this work can be extended to emerging domains where digital technologies increasingly mediate or reshape how social, organizational, and natural resources are governed; applying cooperative-inspired principles (e.g., shared decision-making, community embeddedness, and adaptive governance) as conceptual analogies or transferable frameworks to design more equitable, democratic, and sustainable digital governance systems – e.g., citizen-involved digital platforms, welfare technologies, or bioeconomy value chains augmented by digital tools, thus fostering responsible innovation that respects planetary boundaries and enhances societal wellbeing. His talk partly draws from his article “Co-operatives as Naturally Embedded Organisations and Implications for their Resilience” (Journal of Co-operative Studies).