Facilitator
Parallel Session 3.4: For Strengthening the Community
Eric Bidet is a professor at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Business Administration of Le Mans University-LMU (France). Here, he has directed the Master of Social and Solidarity Economy program for 12 years and has been Chair of the Social and Solidarity Economy department since it was created in 2014.
He obtained a PhD in Sociology from the University of Paris in 2001. His main research interests include social and solidarity economy, social enterprise, cooperatives, and co-production of welfare services in a comparative perspective between Europe and Asia. Professor Bidet has researched cooperatives and the social economy in South Korea for more than 20 years.
Besides his main academic affiliation at LMU, he is also a member of the RECMA Editorial Board, the International Scientific Commission of the CIRIEC, and the Scientific Council of Institut Montparnasse, a mutualist think tank launched by MGEN in 2009.
Since 2019, together with Professor Nadine Richez-Battesti, he has been co-chairing ADDES, an association for the development of data on social economy supported by the Crédit Coopératif and its foundation since its creation in 1982. At the ICA Europe Paris Research Conference in July 2021, ADDES chaired 2 panels entitled “Lost in Transition: The Cooperative Solution?”
How have cooperatives impacted your community?
Le Mans University is a pioneer university in France to propose an academic curriculum focusing on social economy and cooperative management.
ADDES has been engaged for about 40 years into an active lobbying for a better statistical knowledge of social economy and cooperatives advocating, above all, the creation of a satellite-account for social economy. ADDES also actively promotes collaboration between academics and practitioners.