Scaling postgrowth organizations - L Colombo MATIN seminar

Managing and Assessing Transition Innovation Network

Thursday, April 3, 2025
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LEST, Salle Côté Jardin

On the 3rd of April, at 13h30 CET, we will have the pleasure to listen to Laura Colombo on her work on  "Scaling Post-Growth Organisations: Insights from Italian Social Agricultural Cooperatives"

This presentation will explore the Italian approach to social farming, known as Agricoltura Sociale, and how Social Agricultural Cooperatives (SACs) serve as examples of post-growth organizations. We will delve into a case study and discuss strategies for scaling the impact of SACs, emphasizing diverse and synergistic approaches that promote human and ecological flourishing.

 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13505084221147480

Dr Laura Colombo is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School (Sustainable Futures Department). She is Programme Director for BSc Business and Environment, an interdisciplinary programme that roots sustainable business in environmental science and environmental justice. She also serves as an Associate Editor at the Academy of Management Learning and Education (AMLE) journal. Her research has been published in leading international journals such as AMLE, Organization and the Journal of Management Studies.

Laura’s research interests are twofold; firstly, critical management education, and specifically civic management education, where human and ecological flourishing serve as the compass needle guiding educational practices. Secondly, her research focuses on post-growth organisations and their scaling strategies (i.e. the multiple pathways they follow to fulfil the needs they were constituted to address and enable system change). In this context, her research focuses on social agriculture and alternative food networks, examining the relationship between post-growth organising and social-ecological systems.

Before returning to academia, she worked as a project designer, bidding for national and European funding schemes on topics such as food sovereignty, agroecology, environmental justice and transformative learning, building partnerships with NGOs, associations, cooperatives, and environmentally motivated social enterprises.

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