Agriculture in the face of contemporary societal and environmental challenges: contribution of an organizational form that promotes Social Innovation, the French Multi-Stakeholder Social Cooperative – SCIC_AGRI

The current health crisis – along with previous crises – renews the importance of critical research in human sciences. By accentuating the global challenges that require rethinking the sustainability of our ecosystem, it requires thinking about new and alternative ways of making society and responding to economic, social, environmental and political issues. The aim of this project is to study the arrival of a new cooperative player in the agricultural sector – the French Multi-Stakeholder Social Cooperative (SCIC). The ambition of this research project is thus to determine to what extent, why and how the SCIC, carriers of social innovation, destabilize the agricultural sector in the face of a dominant productivist model not adapted to sustainability issues. Indeed, the SCIC can be recognized as a bearer of social innovation due to its different characteristics: multi-stakeholder governance, democratic governance, social utility and territorial anchorage. It represents a «real cooperative break» in the agricultural sector by explicitly posing the question of a collective interest to be shared by a broader set of actors than the only producer.

This research is part of the neo-institutionalist trend which is characterized by an extensive definition of institutions as a real means of social coordination and a focus on cultural, cognitive and institutional embedding of organizations. This trend allows us to understand, in a multi-scale approach (field, ecosystems, organizations, individuals) the different elements composing the institutions (institutional logics, institutionalized practices) management and transformation of these elements (organisational tensions, institutional work). To do this, the project is structured around 6 tasks. T1 corresponds to the coordination, organization and valorization of the project. A scientific and empirical inventory allowing a correct and complete apprehension of the object constitutes the T2. The tasks T3 (multilevel network analysis) and T4 (analysis of the SCIC trajectory within the agricultural field) support the results of the T5 and T6, at the heart of the project and proposing managerial approaches to SCIC as an ecosystem and as an organization.

From a methodological point of view we propose a mixed design: T3 is a quantitative and multilevel analysis of networks. T4 is based on the collection of semi-directional interviews with a wide range of actors in the field, carriers of dominant and alternative logics triangulated with plural secondary data. The data corpus will be subject to a lexical analysis. The T5 and T6, on the other hand, are based on a protocol of comparative case studies for which the collection of data is subject to observation and interviews. The data collected will be subject to cross-thematic content analyses.

3 contributions are expected: (1) different organizational models are emerging within the sector to address current challenges, but very little attention is given to SCIC. (2) Entry through practices and institutional work allows an understanding of micro-foundations of the institution. (3) The analysis of the constitutive practices of the SI makes it possible to contribute to this field of research by studying their variability. Similarly, the methodological protocol makes it possible to highlight 2 methodological contributions, one relating to multilevel network analysis applied to SCIC and the other to the case method, compared and embedded.

An ambitious results dissemination strategy makes it possible to reach the scientific, professional, educational and civic spheres.