Jon Olaizola Alberdi defends his doctoral thesis on Just Transition, sustainability reporting and the role of cooperatives
Jon Olaizola Alberdi defends his doctoral thesis on Just Transition, sustainability reporting and the role of cooperatives
Jon Olaizola Alberdi defends his doctoral thesis on Just Transition, sustainability reporting and the role of cooperatives
Last Friday, 11 September, our colleague Jon Olaizola Alberdi defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Towards sustainability in Europe: Just Transition through standardised sustainability reporting and the role of cooperatives”, receiving the qualification of Outstanding Cum Laude (Sobresaliente Cum Laude)
The thesis was supervised by Dr Oier Imaz Alias (MU-HUHEZI) and focuses on the practical implementation of Just Transition through standardised sustainability reporting requirements. It also examines the role of cooperatives in Just Transition and how the institutionalisation of sustainability reporting affects their ability to make their distinctive contribution to sustainable development visible.
The thesis defence took place on Friday, 11 September, at 11:00, in the Aula Magna of the Oñati Campus.
The examining committee was composed of Dr Massimo Battaglia (Sapienzia-Universitá di Roma-Italia), as chair; Dr Mónica Gago García (MU Enpresagintza), as secretary; and Dr Fernando Polo Garrido (Università Politécnica de Valencia), as committee member.
Thesis abstract
This thesis is situated within the context of the ecological, social and institutional crisis of the contemporary model of economic development, marked by the transgression of planetary boundaries and the persistence of deep social inequalities. Against this backdrop, and in a context in which the need to move towards sustainable development is increasingly recognised at the international level, Just Transition emerges as a paradigm aimed at decarbonising production and consumption systems without disproportionately shifting the impacts of this transformation onto the most vulnerable groups, territories and organisations. At the European level, this paradigm has been progressively institutionalised through the regulatory architecture linked to the European Green Deal. Within this framework, this thesis focuses on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
The main purpose of this thesis is to analyse the practical implementation of Just Transition through the study of standardised sustainability reporting requirements. To this end, the research distinguishes between the theoretical and practical dimensions, showing how Just Transition may acquire different meanings and effects when it moves from theory to practice. This analysis is approached from the perspective of cooperatives, which have been associated with sustainable development in academic literature. By focusing on cooperatives, this thesis examines their role in Just Transition and assesses how the institutionalisation of sustainability reporting affects their ability to make their distinctive contribution to sustainable development visible.
The research is developed as a compendium of three interrelated scientific publications. Methodologically, it adopts a mixed-methods approach that combines a narrative literature review, an analysis of European sustainability reporting requirements through an expert panel, the application of the Fuzzy method for the treatment and validation of results, and semi-structured interviews in the context of MONDRAGON cooperatives.
The findings of this thesis show, first, a theoretical alignment between cooperative principles and the justice principles defining Just Transition. Second, this alignment weakens when translated into practice through the standardised framework of the CSRD, which only partially captures the distinctive value of cooperatives and tends to prioritise comparability among market actors. Third, in the case of MONDRAGON, regulation acts as a central driver for embedding sustainability into organisational realities, although it also generates tensions between external conformity and cooperative identity. At the same time, the cooperative network structures operate as mechanisms of translation, mediation and adaptation.
This thesis contributes to the fields of sustainability transitions, cooperativism and sustainability reporting by showing how the institutionalisation of standardised reporting frameworks can both enable and constrain the visibility of cooperative contributions to Just Transition. The social impact of the research lies in offering a critical analysis of the European standardised reporting framework, identifying its potential weaknesses in supporting a just and sustainable transformation of markets, and proposing pathways to strengthen the transition through business models that, like cooperatives, generate socially embedded value within their contexts.