• Home
• H.M. the King, Honorary Chairman
• Introduction
• Scope of the Congress
• Open letter from the organisers
• Scientific Committee
• Congress location
• Scientific Programme and Presentations
• Introduction and aims
• Congress programme
• Presentations > rules
• Presentations > dates
• Presentations > how to send
• Presentations > publication
• Guests and Speakers
• Press Office
• News
• Picture gallery
• Congress brochure
• Registration and accomodation
• Instructions for registration
• Fees and hotels
• Social and Cultural Programme
• Social Programme during the Congress
• After-Congress Tours
• Tourism and Culture in Seville
• Congress Sponsors
• Collaborators
• Links

Open letter from the organisers

CIRIEC-Spain and CIRIEC-International invite you to the 27th International Congress of CIRIEC which will be held from 22 to 24 September 2008 in Sevilla (Spain).

CIRIEC-International (the International Centre of Research and Information on the Public, Social and Cooperative Economy) is an international, non-governmental scientific organisation which brings together enterprises and organizations of the social economy (co-operatives, mutual societies and non-profit organizations) and of the public sector, as well as people interested in these fields. The aims of this organisation, which was founded in 1947, include promoting international exchanges between the different types of enterprise that are oriented towards serving the collective or general interest and between the world of business people and the scientific world.

CIRIEC-Spain, founded in 1986, is a non-profit scientific association that researches the field of public, social and cooperative economics. It is based at the University of Valencia and brings together social economy researchers from 25 Spanish Universities as well as the main social economy sector organizations in Spain.

CIRIEC has chosen "Innovation and Management: Answers to the great challenges of public, social economy and cooperative enterprises", as the general topic of its 27th Congress. Public, social and cooperative enterprises find themselves impelled to reconcile their specific values and missions with the requirements of efficient, profitable management. The confrontation between these two logics constitutes a factor for innovation, as does, more globally, the diversity of the economic agents and their objectives.

The work of the 27th Congress will address how public, social and cooperative businesses respond to these challenges, innovating and administering change. The challenges to be overcome are many: an increasingly competitive economic environment, constant pressure to abandon the specific features that characterise the management and corporate government methods of these forms of enterprise, responses to new needs, technological changes, the need to take sustainable development into consideration, etc. The answers of public, social and cooperative enterprises to these challenges require strong participation in the knowledge economy and in all the different dimensions of innovation, including innovation in products, in markets, in processes, social innovation and organisational innovation.

We trust that this interesting subject-matter and the opportunity to take part in an international debate with representatives of the political, economic and social spheres and experts from the universities and, particularly, to hear Dr Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, will encourage you to join us in Sevilla.