The Institute conducts cross-disciplinary research about the emerging cooperative digital economy, which is relatively uncharted territory in anthropology, political science, sociology, history, law, and economics. This rapidly expanding field is also inextricably linked to labor and cooperative studies. This work is concerned with finance, entrepreneurship, and organizational studies in business schools. Governance and corporate structure are critical subjects in law schools. The Institute's mission, in recognition of existing research gaps, is to provide applied and theoretical knowledge, education, and policy analysis.

INTRODUCTION

1.

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The development and democratization of information and communication technologies (ICT) has supported a trend consisting in the intensification of interorganizational collaborations. The ability to exchange more information, quicker and at lower costs, allows organizations to focus on their core functions by increasingly delegating complementary activities to external partners [START_REF] Gulati | Meta-organization design : Rethinking design in interorganizational and community contexts[END_REF]. In this perspective, some organizations have collectively equipped themselves with interorganizational information systems (IOIS) automating the exchange of data among autonomous parties [START_REF] Robey | Theoretical Foundations of Empirical Research on Interorganizational Systems : Assessing Past Contributions and Guiding Future Directions[END_REF].

IOISs have allowed the emergence of unicorns, which reached the status of powerful multinationals within a few years' time. This is for example the case of Amazon Marketplace, an IOIS gathering more than 2 million merchants around the world [START_REF] Faconnier | Avec la crise du Covid-19, de plus en plus de jeunes s'engagent comme bénévoles en France[END_REF]. Thanks to the automated transmission of data, consumers can simultaneously consult, compare, and order products offered by this network of merchants. Founded in 1994, Amazon is now the world's third largest retailer in the high-tech industry in terms of annual revenue (Wikipedia, 2021c).

An IOIS is not neutral: it is embedded in a social structure of inter-organizational collaboration. Relations among organizations are structured around norms and ideas, stemming from the balance of power between organizational actors [START_REF] Reimers | An empirical evaluation of existing IS change theories for the case of IOIS evolution[END_REF]. The social structure is translated in standardized processes, themselves integrated to digital artifacts (user interfaces, databases, data exchange protocols, etc.) used to facilitate inter-organizational collaboration: the IOIS stabilizes a social structure, and enacts the balance of power among organizational actors. At the same time, by automating the exchange of certain information, digital artifacts stimulate the emergence of new practices of inter-organizational collaboration.

Thus, the IOIS contributes to stabilizing and redefining the social structure shaping relationships among organizations [START_REF] Rodón | Analysing IOIS adoption through structural contradictions[END_REF]. Booking.com is one example: the platform has positioned itself as an intermediary between hotel establishments and consumers. Its added value (compared to traditional travel agencies, for instance) is based on an IOIS automating reservation processes: a traveler can compare and book accommodation among 540,000 properties from 202 countries (« Booking.com », 2021). Since the technical structure provides that customer data is stocked and processed by the intermediary, the IOIS contributes to strengthening hotel establishments' dependence towards Booking.com which acquires a power to unilaterally impose its pricing conditions [START_REF] Luczak-Rougeaux | Comment les acteurs de l'hospitalité peuvent-ils reprendre le contrôle de leurs données ? TOM.travel[END_REF].

INTRODUCTION

Centralized IOISs thus allow companies to build up a dominant position on an international market within a few years. This relatively new phenomenon represents a paradigm shift for cooperatives, which are struggling to develop appropriate policy responses [START_REF] König | Inertia in response to non-paradigmatic change : The case of meta-organizations[END_REF]. Uber offers a well-known example: created in 2009, the company now operates in 310 cities around the world (Wikipedia, 2021a). While platform cooperatives are emerging around the world (e.g., EVA and Taxi Coop Mtl in Montreal), their ability to offer a viable alternative to unicorns remains unclear [START_REF] Mcnamara | L'impact de la COVID-19 sur les personnes âgées[END_REF].

IOIS emergence is not the first paradigm shift faced by cooperatives, which claim their origin in Robert Owen's experiments in the early nineteenth century (Wikipedia, 2021b). Studying cooperative associations provides a better understanding of their collective resilience to paradigmatic changes [START_REF] König | Inertia in response to non-paradigmatic change : The case of meta-organizations[END_REF]. Cooperative associations are meta-organizations: their members are organizations, rather than individuals [START_REF] Ahrne | Organizations and meta-organizations[END_REF]. Their main function is to provide their members, cooperatives, with a social structure of collective action [START_REF] Harter | The boundary-spanning role of a cooperative support organization : Managing the paradox of stability and change in non-traditional organizations[END_REF] which is usually referred to as the cooperative movement. Cooperative associations define, represent and model the social structure through a set of strategic actions, such as information, public relations, training, or standardization activities [START_REF] Spillman | Meta-Organization Matters[END_REF]. For example, funeral cooperatives in Quebec have used a cooperative association to cope with an incoming pressure from their environment: aggressive entry strategies from American multinationals in the early 1990s. By coordinating their strategic actions within their association, the cooperatives managed to resist and consolidate their position while strengthening their collective efficiency [START_REF] Audebrand | All Equal in Death? Fighting inequality in the contemporary funeral industry[END_REF].

As mentioned earlier, IOISs are embedded in inter-organizational social structures: therefore, cooperative associations seem to be endowed with relevant assets to bring out and structure IOISs. While the literature on cooperative associations is scarce, several studies have documented the contribution of meta-organizations to IOIS projects aimed at enhancing collective efficiency at the organizational field level (par ex. : [START_REF] Kurnia | The Impact of Multilevel Contextual Factors on IS Adoption at the Inter-organizational Level[END_REF][START_REF] Reimers | An empirical evaluation of existing IS change theories for the case of IOIS evolution[END_REF][START_REF] Steinfield | Exploring Interorganizational Systems at the Industry Level of Analysis : Evidence from the US Home Mortgage Industry[END_REF]. In addition, the examples of IOISs established within the framework of cooperative associations are numerous: we can mention the Desjardins banking management system, placed under the responsibility of the Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (Desjardins, s. d.); or the REScoop VPP project establishing an IOIS for European actors in the renewable energy transition, led by the REScoop association based in Brussels (REScoop, s. d.). At the same time, it appears that many cooperative INTRODUCTION associations are not (yet) engaged in digital projects involving the deployment of an IOIS.

Such observations led us to formulate the following research question: how can cooperative associations contribute to the emergence of a cooperative IOIS, and which technical characteristics would they tend to equip the IOIS with?

Our report consists in conducting exploratory theoretical reflections drawn from a preliminary literature review presented at the 37th European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium. It is divided into three main sections. Section 1 proposes a theoretical framework to understand and analyze strategies surrounding the emergence of cooperative IOISs. The framework borrows from four theories: Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice, standards, organizing vision, and meta-organizations. Section 2 mobilizes this theoretical framework to understand how international cooperative principles may influence IOISs' infrastructures. Section 3 concludes by clarifying limitations and further research avenues.

BUILDING THE MOVEMENT OF PLATFORM COOPERATIVISM IN BRAZIL

2.

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR COOPERATIVES' COLLECTIVE DIGITAL

STRATEGIES

This first section is aimed at building a theoretical framework relevant for understanding and analyzing theories surrounding cooperatives' collective strategies leading to the emergence of an IOIS. We begin by introducing Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice, which offers a relevant lense to read cooperatives' strategies in light of the international cooperative principles (1). Then, we mobilize the theories of standards to reveal how mechanisms of social injustices may be integrated in the technical foundation of an IOIS (2), before exploring how such mechanisms are maintained in the long term (3). Lastly, we use the theory of metaorganization to explain how cooperative associations may contribute in establishing IOISs (4).

Bridging cooperative identity with cooperative digital strategies

"A co-operative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise" (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015, p. ii). As purposeful organizations, cooperatives "have a long tradition of being concerned about and working for peace and social justice" (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015, p. 89). Yet, cooperatives' aspiration for social justice is regularly challenged in everyday's operational strategies.

French cooperative banks offer an illustrative example about paradoxes that can be observed between cooperative values on the one hand, and cooperative operational strategies on the other hand. Established in the 19th century with the aim to democratize the access to credit and banking services, nowadays they proudly count 22 million members and perform two thirds of the national retail banking activities [START_REF] Richez-Battesti | Les banques coopératives en France : L'hybridation au péril de la coopération[END_REF]. The cooperative movement being so strong in such a key sector, Charles Gide could have expected the upcoming announcement of a "cooperative republic" [START_REF] Pénin | Charles Gide est-il toujours d'actualité[END_REF]). Yet, it appears that the movement is suffering from a lack of transformative approach, as shown by the Crédit Agricole case. First, the main farmers' cooperative bank, has been criticized for using its financial power so as to constraint farmers in partnering with governments to conduct structural changes participating in the industrialization of the food sector [START_REF] Chesneaux | Les campagnes françaises : La fuite en avant. Dans De la modernité[END_REF], despite documented individual sufferings caused by such practices [START_REF] Prével | Le productivisme agricole : Socioanthropologie de l'industrialisation des campagnes françaises[END_REF] which illustrates a lack of recognition from the cooperative towards its members. Although Crédit Agricole claims 10 million members (Crédit Agricole, s. d.), farmers have been progressively marginalized from its governance: the bank has progressively diluted farmers' participation in a larger membership, and reduced their economic participation within the overall bank's equity [START_REF] Cousteau | 10 millions de sociétaires[END_REF] eventually resulting in a crisis of representation. Finally, in 2015, while 25% of French farmers lived below the poverty line in 2015 [START_REF] Bergot | Un quart des agriculteurs sous le seuil de pauvreté[END_REF], Crédit Agricole was announcing a net result of 6 billion euros (Crédit Agricole, 2016), which illustrates a tremendous inequality of redistribution.

Our point here is not to point the finger at Crédit Agricole, but rather to illustrate how in their search for performance, cooperatives may be led to implement strategies which in fine lead them to replicate the very mechanisms of social injustice which they initially aimed at addressing. Yet, while a posteriori analysis may easily reveal such gaps, it may be challenging to understand if and how one specific action contributes to solving or reinforcing social injustices. Nancy Fraser made a similar assessment: by observing anti-racist and feminist activist organizations, she pointed out that promising activist strategies eventually led to counterproductive results, tragically reinforcing the very mechanisms of injustices that were initially addressed. This observation led her to propose an analytical lense, aimed at helping researchers to understand why given strategies happened to be successful or unsuccessful in tackling social injustices, and eventually to help activists in reinforcing the transformative nature of their strategies (see for example : Fraser, 2005a[START_REF] Fraser | Reframing justice in a globalizing world[END_REF][START_REF] Fraser | Qu'est-ce que la justice sociale ?[END_REF][START_REF] Fraser | Recognition, Redistribution and Representation in Capitalist Global Society : An Interview with Nancy Fraser[END_REF]. Nancy Fraser's theory was later translated by management researchers to reveal some mechanisms of social transformation embedded in the cooperative model [START_REF] Audebrand | Le Management Responsable. Une Approche Axiologique[END_REF], and to analyze collective strategies implemented by cooperatives to resist capitalist competitors [START_REF] Audebrand | All Equal in Death? Fighting inequality in the contemporary funeral industry[END_REF].

Nancy Fraser proposes three dimensions underlying the concept of justice, although she admits that the concept itself is indivisible (Fraser, 2005a[START_REF] Fraser | Reframing justice in a globalizing world[END_REF][START_REF] Fraser | Recognition, Redistribution and Representation in Capitalist Global Society : An Interview with Nancy Fraser[END_REF]. The cultural dimension refers to the social status of individuals and social groups. Cultural injustices relate to norms and ideologies stratifying society into groups discriminated against according to their status, value or prestige (recognition). This includes claims related to gender, sexual identity and cultural minorities. The political dimension refers to the governance structures and decision-making procedures of a social system (representation). Injustices are the result of rules and barriers that limit or deny the ability of certain members of society to exercise their political rights. They result, for example, in restrictions on social protests, tools for resolving social conflicts that prevent the representation of stakeholders, or in the strengthening of the power of large companies vis-à-vis political representatives. Finally, the economic dimension of justice refers to the distribution of material resources and the allocation of economic power between individuals (redistribution). Economic injustices arise from the structure of social classes, limiting access to economic resources to certain individuals and groups and thus restricting the ability of these groups to interact on an equal footing with other members of society. They include issues of access to vital resources (e.g. water, food, housing), injustices of income and wealth, or capitalist extraction of resources.

In addition to analyzing the forms of injustice, the philosopher presents two types of remedies. The first type, affirmative, seeks to resolve injustices, but without combating their root causes. The second type, transformative, fights the systemic sources of these injustices. Nancy Fraser takes racism as an example of injustice that can be fought in an affirmative and transformative way. This injustice results in cultural domination that exposes a group to different forms of contempt: an interpretation of its practices and beliefs as foreign or hostile, communicational and interpretative practices that make it invisible, without identity and power, and a lack of respect for its members. The remedy promoted by civil society and governments is the promotion of multiculturalism and the revalorization of minority identities.

As an affirmative remedy, the goal of multiculturalism is to encourage cohabitation between different entities, which can, at the same time, lead to communitarian reactions and nationalist overtones. A transformative remedy to racism would be not only to deconstruct the racist prejudices at the root of this injustice of recognition, but also to link this struggle for recognition to the struggle for a more just redistribution, with a view to reducing, or even eliminating, the social relations of domination and subordination [START_REF] Fraser | Qu'est-ce que la justice sociale ?[END_REF].

Thus, Nancy Fraser's theory appears to offer a relevant lense to analyze strategies implemented by cooperatives to perform their digital transition. In the following subsection, we focus on mechanisms influencing digital strategies in the context of an IOIS.

Interoperability standards as mechanisms of social (in)justices

As argued above, although cooperatives are established as purposeful businesses aiming for social justice, their operational strategic decisions may eventually lead them to effectively reinforce mechanisms of social injustices -sometimes against their own will. In the present subsection, we tend to focus on mechanisms of social injustices which may be embedded in the very infrastructure of an IOIS.

IOIS technical component consists in a set of information technology (IT) artifacts: this includes IT tools (e.g. interfaces and databases), and interoperability standards that allow such IT tools to collaborate with each other [START_REF] Brunsson | The Dynamics of Standardization : Three Perspectives on Standards in Organization Studies[END_REF].

Interoperability can be defined as the ability of autonomous IT tools to exchange and use information without altering its meaning or interpretation [START_REF] Rauffet | Designing and Managing Organizational Interoperability with Organizational Capabilities and Roadmaps[END_REF]. IT tools that form the IOIS technical component are embedded in network markets: their value depends on their ability to increase the breadth and depth of collaboration among business partners [START_REF] Saraf | IS Application Capabilities and Relational Value in Interfirm Partnerships[END_REF]. In other words, interoperability standards constitute an intrinsic value of the IT tool: the more the standards are disseminated, the greater the number of accessible partners, the greater the resources available to the organization, and the more the tool becomes valuable for the organization (network externalities) [START_REF] Garud | Changing competitive dynamics in network industries : An exploration of sun microsystems' open systems strategy[END_REF][START_REF] Tassey | Standardization in technology-based markets[END_REF]. In turn, by adopting the IT tool, the organization engages itself in a dependency path created by interoperability standards: positive network externalities are provided as long as the organization uses such standards. Should it decide to adopt another standard, the organization would lose benefits associated with the former standard [START_REF] Besen | Choosing How to Compete : Strategies and Tactics in Standardization[END_REF].

Adopting an IT tool based on competing standards represents an expensive and uncertain move: in addition to the investments required for implementing and assimilating of the tool, the organization gives up tangible network externalities, to join another network in the (unverified) hope to benefit from new and larger externalities [START_REF] Zhu | Migration to open-standard interorganizational systems : Network effects, switching costs, and path dependency[END_REF]. As a result, the dependency paths entail lock-in effects: organizations attract each other within a network generating collective externalities (self-strengthening), while undermining their individual ability to leave this network (perpetuation) [START_REF] Bergek | Is one path enough? Multiple paths and path interaction as an extension of path dependency theory[END_REF]. Lock-in mechanisms also have a cognitive dimension: communities feed their respective frames of reference by learning about and from the IT tools they use [START_REF] Cecere | Lock-in and path dependence : An evolutionary approach to eco-innovations[END_REF][START_REF] Wang | Community Learning in Information Technology Innovation[END_REF]. Frames of reference generate efficiency, by stabilizing interactions among individuals around standards and routines; at the same time, they constrain communities' cognitive abilities to grasp technologies implementing different logical processes. Thus, lock-in mechanisms generate collective inertia towards radical and disruptive IT innovation: this explains the fact that a given technology can persist within an organizational field, even when more efficient alternative technologies exist [START_REF] Besen | Choosing How to Compete : Strategies and Tactics in Standardization[END_REF]. Such mechanisms can explain why the green transition takes so long: most of our daily life being developed around an energy standard (fossil fuels), changing for another energy standard (renewable energy) entails tremendous challenges for organizational actors in terms of investments, knowledge, and risks. Consequently, organizations demonstrate collective inertia by sticking from the same old technologies, although being aware about their limitations [START_REF] Cecere | Lock-in and path dependence : An evolutionary approach to eco-innovations[END_REF].

Lock-in mechanisms are subject to organizational strategies, whether aimed at strengthening them -or deactivating them. An IT provider may strengthen these mechanisms by incorporating standards it produces and owns (known as proprietary standards) to IT products it commercializes [START_REF] Tassey | Standardization in technology-based markets[END_REF]. In doing so, the IT provider can make its products incompatible with its competitors, hereby establishing an IT environment upon which it has full control and exclusivity: to be able to collaborate within this environment, users have no choice but to adopt solutions provided by the firm. Such strategies are everywhere in our daily lives: just think about the last time you wanted to charge your Samsung phone, but all your friends had iPhones…

In the long run, an IT provider may progressively build a monopolistic position over a given organizational field, preventing both competitors to enter the field and users to leave it [START_REF] Besen | Choosing How to Compete : Strategies and Tactics in Standardization[END_REF]. Such a strategy may also be implemented within a vertical value chain: a key actor (e.g. a wholesaler) can organize its business relationships around an IT tool which would be deliberately with its competitors' ones, thus consolidating its own position within this value chain [START_REF] Reimers | An empirical evaluation of existing IS change theories for the case of IOIS evolution[END_REF]. Locked-in market structures typically result in higher prices and discouragement of innovation [START_REF] Tassey | Standardization in technology-based markets[END_REF].

On the other hand, some players may carry out strategies aimed at disabling lockin mechanisms. Examples include competitors to the dominant IT firm seeking to penetrate the market [START_REF] Garud | Changing competitive dynamics in network industries : An exploration of sun microsystems' open systems strategy[END_REF] or other parties interested in lowering barriers to innovation within an organizational field (e.g.: consultants, researchers, organizational managers, etc.) [START_REF] Reimers | An empirical evaluation of existing IS change theories for the case of IOIS evolution[END_REF][START_REF] Steinfield | Exploring Interorganizational Systems at the Industry Level of Analysis : Evidence from the US Home Mortgage Industry[END_REF]. Such players may produce and promote publicly documented specifications, called open standards, designed to create the conditions for interoperability among any IT tools implementing such specifications.

Now that we have explored how IT providers' interests can be reflected into interoperability standards, comes the following question: how do interoperability standards come to be adopted in the first place?

Strategies for diffusing interoperability standards among an organizational field

Organizations are typically reluctant to adopt IT innovations which challenge a dominant mindset in an industry [START_REF] König | Inertia in response to non-paradigmatic change : The case of meta-organizations[END_REF]. This phenomenon can be explained by the fact that an innovation is inherently out of scope of the existing organization's knowledge: potential adopters lack the cognitive references enabling them to understand which opportunities and challenges the innovation can generate for their organizations. Organizational inertia towards IT innovation may be overcome by organizational learning. When an organization encounters a technology which it perceives as an innovation, its members engage a learning mechanism which begins with a phase of understanding, which consists in building a basic understanding by fetching information among the environment [START_REF] Wang | Community Learning in Information Technology Innovation[END_REF].

Promoters of emerging standards may attempt to leverage on organizational learning so as to facilitate their adoption [START_REF] Marsan | Adoption of open source software in organizations : A socio-cognitive perspective[END_REF]. To do so, promoters may elaborate and disseminate narratives designed to make their innovation intelligible by targeted organizations [START_REF] Swanson | The Organizing Vision in Information Systems Innovation[END_REF].

Influencing collective perceptions about an innovation requires extensive resources which often exceed the capacity of a single player, especially when the innovation in question consists of standards whose value rely on their simultaneous adoption from a significant number of business partners. Also, the various promoters who have an interest in the dissemination of an innovation tend to form a community of innovation, in which they pool their resources [START_REF] Kim | 20 Years Old but Still a Teenager? A Review of Organizing Vision Theory and Suggested Directions[END_REF]. A community of innovation brings together a group of actors (IT solution providers, consultants, researchers, etc.) around a common narrative surrounding an innovation [START_REF] Marsan | Has open source software been institutionalized in organizations or not?[END_REF]. This common narrative is intended to provide organizations with a vision of how IT innovation could be integrated into organizational structures and processes: this narrative may be referred to as an organizing vision [START_REF] Swanson | The Organizing Vision in Information Systems Innovation[END_REF]. The organizing vision serves three key functions: it helps actors to interpret the innovation; it serves to legitimize the innovation, by anchoring it within collective reference frameworks' ideas and norms; and it enables consistent mobilization among stakeholders interested in its dissemination [START_REF] Marsan | Adoption of open source software in organizations : A socio-cognitive perspective[END_REF][START_REF] Swanson | The Organizing Vision in Information Systems Innovation[END_REF].

As it evolves in an organizational field, an organizing vision is subject to contradicting forces: it benefits from a community of innovation which conducts a variety of promoting actions to increase its fame and power of conviction (publications, events...), but it also meets critics seeking to discredit IT innovation. Most of the time, an innovation can hardly attract collective attention, and eventually gets forgotten. Thus, the organizing vision is an ephemeral rhetoric: if it does not fall into oblivion, it is intended to become institutionalized [START_REF] Swanson | The Organizing Vision in Information Systems Innovation[END_REF]. In the latter case, an innovation comes to be taken for granted by the organizational field in question: adoption mechanisms rely no much longer on rational cost-benefit assessment process, but rather on a mimicry effect leading organizations to comply with a new collective norm [START_REF] Marsan | Has open source software been institutionalized in organizations or not?[END_REF]. When a standard of interoperability comes to be institutionalized, adopting the tools incorporating such standards becomes the norm. An illustrative example is the SMTP standard that specifies the protocol by which an email is transmitted: the institutionalization of SMTP leads organizations to naturally adopt and implement emailing systems, without questioning the pros and cons of this protocol.

In the preceding sub-sections, we saw how interoperability standards shape interorganizational relations, and what are the strategies for diffusing such standards among an organizational field. We will now focus on cooperative associations, so as to understand how their assets can enable them to get involved in an IOIS project.

Cooperative associations: locus of (digital) collective action

Cooperative associations are meta-organizations: their members are themselves organizations (cooperatives), rather than individuals [START_REF] Ahrne | Organizations and meta-organizations[END_REF]. They are established by cooperatives concerned to mitigate uncertainties stemming from their external environment by collectively controlling it [START_REF] Ahrne | Resurrecting organization by going beyond organizations[END_REF].

Cooperative associations thus perform a dual function: organizing relations within an organizational field, and organizing the relations between the said organizational field and its external environment [START_REF] König | Inertia in response to non-paradigmatic change : The case of meta-organizations[END_REF]. Both functions are presented succinctly in the following paragraphs.

First, a meta-organization organizes relationships within an organizational field by offering a cultural infrastructure for inter-organizational collaboration [START_REF] Spillman | Meta-Organization Matters[END_REF]. This infrastructure is based on a collective identity which defines the organizational field, and which offers a set of ideas shared by its members [START_REF] König | Inertia in response to non-paradigmatic change : The case of meta-organizations[END_REF]. In the case of cooperative associations, their field identity is rooted in the seven cooperative principles defined by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015). The five first principles are closely related to the original version, as practiced by the Rochdale Pioneers (International Co-operative Alliance, 2004), and focus on the relation between a cooperative and its members: voluntary and open membership; democratic control; economic participation; autonomy and independence; education, training and information. Later, two new principles were defined, regulating the relation between a cooperative and its partners within the cooperative movement and beyond: cooperation among cooperatives (or inter-cooperation); and concern for the community. Thus, cooperative associations' framework of collaboration is composed of organizations who have in common internal governance models (principles 1 to 5), who agree not to compete with each other (principle 6), and who aim to collectively act for social justice (principle 7).

Second, a cooperative association organizes the relations between its organizational field and its external environment. This function consists to protect their field, by ensuring its representation and legitimization toward institutional and governmental actors; it also entails to stimulating innovation within the field to ensure its adaptation to changes happening in the external environment [START_REF] Audebrand | All Equal in Death? Fighting inequality in the contemporary funeral industry[END_REF][START_REF] Harter | The boundary-spanning role of a cooperative support organization : Managing the paradox of stability and change in non-traditional organizations[END_REF][START_REF] Huybrechts | The Roles of Networks in Institutionalizing New Hybrid Organizational Forms : Insights from the European Renewable Energy Cooperative Network[END_REF].

In the realization of both functions mentioned above, cooperative associations conduct cultural activities which enact and shape the identity of the cooperative movement. With respect to innovations stemming from their environment, they conduct strategic activities aimed at stimulating, feeding and influencing the learning process conducted by their members [START_REF] Berkowitz | Meta-organizing firms' capabilities for sustainable innovation : A conceptual framework[END_REF]. Such strategic activities include research, information-sharing and capacity-building, which they root into the field's identity: they identify the innovation, analyze it in light of the cooperative principles, and disseminate their analysis to their members. For instance, [START_REF] Harter | The boundary-spanning role of a cooperative support organization : Managing the paradox of stability and change in non-traditional organizations[END_REF] When a cooperative association engages in the promotion of interoperability standards, it contributes to create a technical dependency path for its organizational field [START_REF] Reimers | An empirical evaluation of existing IS change theories for the case of IOIS evolution[END_REF]. This leads us to wonder which type of standards would a cooperative association tend to promote: in other words, would the cooperative identity lead cooperative associations to favor open or proprietary interoperability standards? We address this question in the following section. OPENING OR CLOSING?

Along the previous section, we introduced Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice, arguing that it could offer a relevant lense for understanding strategies implemented by cooperatives to establish IOISs. We also mobilized the theory of standards to reveal how digital infrastructures of collaboration can shape interorganizational relationships and enact relations of power. More specifically, we pointed out that proprietary standards may be used by actors to concentrate and consolidate their dominant position among an ecosystem of partners, although open standards may contribute to reduce lock-in effects by mitigating barriers to entry and encouraging coopetition. Finally, we highlighted the role that cooperative associations can and do take as leaders of collective digital innovation, mobilizing members around projects of cooperative IOISs.

As cooperative associations embody the cooperative identity, we presume that their strategic activities are influenced by the cooperative principles. More specifically, as principles 6 (inter-cooperation) and 7 (concern for the community) focus on the relations among cooperatives and their external environments, they may offer useful guidance for collective strategies aimed at establishing a cooperative IOIS. In the present section, we mobilize this theoretical framework to discuss which types of standards (open or proprietary) cooperative associations may be likely to choose to build a cooperative IOIS. To do so, we attempt to highlight connections between both cooperative principles on the one hand, and the open or proprietary nature of interoperability standards.

Cooperative principle 6: cooperating (exclusively?) among cooperatives

The cultural infrastructure common to cooperative associations and their members is materialized by seven international cooperative principles. In this section, we will focus in particular on the sixth principle, cooperation between cooperatives (or inter-cooperation). We will see how this principle models the cultural infrastructure incorporated by cooperative associations, before looking at the capabilities arising from this principle allowing cooperative associations to act on the infrastructures useful to IOISs (normative and ideational on the one hand, and technical on the other hand).

a. Cooperation among cooperatives as a trust-builder

Spillman (2018) and Berkowitz and Bor (2018) agree to consider meta-organizations as structures of collective action. For these authors, meta-organizations serve as platforms in which competing companies take collective action to create the collective infrastructures useful for their business. This echoes, for example, the observations of [START_REF] Steinfield | Exploring Interorganizational Systems at the Industry Level of Analysis : Evidence from the US Home Mortgage Industry[END_REF]. The members of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America compete with each other, competing for the mortgage market in the United States; nevertheless, they have cooperated on an ad hoc basis to build a common infrastructure (processes and standards) on the basis of which a IOIS could emerge. The infrastructure allowed the emergence of more efficient practices, on which the competition continued.

The sixth cooperative nevertheless seems to deviate from this perspective. It states: "Cooperatives serve their members as effectively as possible, and strengthen the cooperative movement by collaborating through local, national, regional and international structures" (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015). The Memorandum of Intent for Cooperative Principles issued by the International Cooperative Alliance (2015) distinguishes two key messages in this principle. "The first part of the sentence recognizes that while cooperatives can accomplish a lot at the local level, they will accomplish even more by working together to generate economies of scale and develop a mutual representative force" (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015, p. 78). The second part of the sentence refers to cooperative associations, intended to provide this infrastructure allowing and encouraging cooperatives to "work together permanently for the same purpose, and not just collaborate occasionally" (ibid.).

Rather than setting up the structural conditions for competition among their members, cooperative associations focus on pooling member cooperatives' resources to be more competitive vis-à-vis their non-cooperative rivals. In other words, the phenomena of coopetition that usually take place within metaorganizations is now externalized to an environment outside the cooperative associations. Externalizing competition influences the strategic behavior of cooperative associations. They see competition as an environmental phenomenon that generates uncertainty and pressure for their members: their metaorganizational function of stabilizing the environment leads them to mitigate its effects.

Audebrand and Barros (2018) noted this behavior by studying the Fédération des coopératives funéraires du Québec (FCFQ). Faced with the penetration of foreign multinationals, the cooperatives have pooled their resources within this cooperative association, in order to modernize their management tools and their economic performance. However, unlike the Mortgage Bankers Association of America which has enabled its members to strengthen their organizational competitiveness through a collective infrastructure [START_REF] Steinfield | Exploring Interorganizational Systems at the Industry Level of Analysis : Evidence from the US Home Mortgage Industry[END_REF], the FCFQ has created an infrastructure within which the competition is cancelled. Cooperatives have pooled key economic functions within their association, such as advertising actions and the training of their staff: in a way, they are dispossessing themselves of their competitive capacities at the organizational level, to bring this capacity to the metaorganizational level [START_REF] Steinfield | Exploring Interorganizational Systems at the Industry Level of Analysis : Evidence from the US Home Mortgage Industry[END_REF].

Thus, as a component of cooperative associations' cultural infrastructure, the sixth cooperative principle favors cooperative relations rather than competition among cooperatives. This feature can be important for the establishment and evolution of IOISs. [START_REF] Marsan | Has open source software been institutionalized in organizations or not?[END_REF] were interested in identifying the factors that influenced the career of an organizing vision: that of free software. In particular, they noted that the level of cooperation between actors in the innovation community would be a key factor positively influencing the career of the organizing vision.

They also noted that competition can be a good accompaniment to an organizing vision, when this competition is between the innovation community (e.g. a community associated with the cooperative identity) and its rival communities (e.g. a community associated with a non-cooperative identity). On the other hand, the confrontation between the actors within an innovation community would negatively influence the organizing career carried by it.

The study by [START_REF] Basterretxea | Coopetition and innovation. Lessons from worker cooperatives in the Spanish machine tool industry[END_REF] empirically verifies the influence of cooperative identity on the structure of innovation networks. The researchers were interested in the machine tool industry in the Spanish Basque Countries, and more particularly in the research and development (R&D) activities carried out in partnership among several companies. They observed mechanisms of collaboration established between cooperative enterprises, members of the Mondragon group (cooperative association), and other enterprises in the territory (non-cooperatives). The study notes an invisible cultural division between cooperatives and their capitalist counterparts. While cooperatives tend to consider R&D activities according to a logic of pooling resources and integrating organizations; for their part, capitalist companies perceive these R&D services as an infrastructure, allowing them to improve their own organizational performance (2019).

b. Locking up the cooperative value through technical standards

Technical standards are intended to be rules for the many (Brunsson et al., 2012, p. 616). This is particularly the case of open standards, whose influence is intended to go beyond the organizational field covered by the meta-organization. For example, web standards issued by the W3C are not only intended for W3C members: they aim to standardize the technologies of web players in general. For their part, as we saw earlier, cooperative associations are established to build an environment of shared cooperation: they may conduct activities consisting in pooling members' resources. However, such resources are primarily for members.

While open interoperability standards are intended to create an open infrastructure for coopetition, the pooling of cooperative resources is intended for a community of members with defined boundaries. This logic is reflected in the strategies of secondlevel cooperatives in the digital sector. For example, CoopCycle, an international association of bicycle delivery cooperatives, provides its members with a delivery management application. "The CoopCycle software is therefore not open source: its source code is available on GitHub but its commercial use is reserved for cooperative companies!" (CoopCycle, s. d.). Thus, cooperative associations may favor the constitution of a cooperative technical infrastructure, specific to their organizational field, intended to strengthen the competitiveness of their members vis-à-vis their competitors. This technical infrastructure can be integrated into an umbrella cooperative: this is for example the case of the Mondragon cooperative group, which provides its members with pooled research and development resources [START_REF] Basterretxea | Coopetition and innovation. Lessons from worker cooperatives in the Spanish machine tool industry[END_REF].

To conclude this subsection, we have tried to put into perspective the (rare) studies dealing with the digital shift of the cooperative movement with a socio-cognitive approach to IOISs articulated with the emerging theory on meta-organizations. This has allowed us to emphasize the sixth cooperative principle, inter-cooperation, as a normative component of the cooperative movement: through their cultural activities, cooperative associations strive to translate this principle into the ideational and material components intended to strengthen collaboration among their members and resist competition from external actors. Therefore, we assume that the principle of inter-cooperation could contribute to structuring a cooperative IOIS based on proprietary standards.

Cooperative principle 7: contributing to social justice

The 7th cooperative principle, which states that "Cooperatives work for the sustainable development of their communities through policies approved by their members'' (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015, p. 85), anchors cooperatives' activities within their broader environment. The very raison-d'être of cooperatives is not to serve members as investors, but as human beings: addressing members' needs requires the adoption of a holistic approach to their environments. In this new subsection, we begin by arguing that principle 7 may be a driver for the adoption of open interoperability standards. Then, we illustrate such theoretical reflections with our own field experience from COVID-19 crisis.

a. Open standards for transformative interorganizational information systems

"This 7th Principle of working for the 'sustainable development of their communities' also requires that co-operatives accept responsibility for making a contribution to tackling poverty and wealth inequality, not only between developed and emerging economies, but also the growing wealth inequality in nation states and in the local communities within which co-operatives operate" (International Co-operative Alliance, 2015, p. 90).

As presented in previous sections, proprietary standards are used as strategies to consolidate a dominant position. By setting up an IOIS based on proprietary standards, the standard-setting actor sets the network's boundaries. It may define criteria for allowing a user organization to join its network (for instance, through a licensing system), and decide which IT providers are able to operate within the IOIS (for instance, by organizing the non-interoperability of given web applications). Thus, non-interoperable strategies are drawing policymakers' attention as they contribute to increasing prices, unfair competitive practices, discouragement of innovation, and reduction of users' control over their personal data. Put differently: IOISs based on proprietary standards could be structurally vectors of wealth inequality -and, by extension, of social injustices.

One could argue that such impacts stem from market-driven lock-in strategies conducted by extractive business models: a cooperative-owned standard would rather aim for creating a safe space for the cooperative movement to keep control over its collective value. We propose to analyze the argument in light of Nancy Fraser's theoretical lens.

Fundamentally, we may question the assumption according to which data processed by cooperatives should be kept under exclusive control of such cooperatives. Such an assumption can be related to emerging data-driven business models, which consider the data as a resource to be extracted from the environment, and used to consolidate an organization's competitive advantage -sold to third parties [START_REF] Srnicek | Capitalisme de plateforme : L'hégémonie de l'économie numérique[END_REF]). Let's keep in mind that much of this data consists in individual users' data. Extracting users' data and locking it into a system is a form of dispossession: individuals lose control over a resource they generate, and which is their property. Cooperatives' democratic governance (cooperative principle 2) creates an opportunity for individuals to regain control over the structures storing and exploiting their data. Yet, as we know, democracy is an ideal that encounters many challenges. Members can control a cooperative only if they voluntarily join and participate in it (cooperative principle 1), and if the cooperative is itself an autonomous entity (cooperative principle 4).

Thus, an IOIS aimed at restraining data exchanges only to cooperatives may consist in an affirmative remedy to the social injustices generated by mainstream IOISs.

The cultural foundations of such injustices would remain unchanged: cooperatives would act within a paradigm denying individuals' capacity to effectively control their personal data (misrecognition). To establish the IOIS technical foundations, cooperatives would probably establish a standardization body, whose function would consist in defining, producing, and maintaining interoperability standards. Usually, such standardizing organizations implement heterarchical governance models based on consensus: member cooperatives would theoretically be able to collectively control this collective body, and represent their members accordingly. Yet, in a context where individuals are not recognized their right to control their data, it is most likely that such work will be delegated to knowledgeable people, i.e. technicians, whose interests might diverge from the one of the members.

Consequently, individuals would remain marginalized from decision-making bodies, consolidating an injustice of representation. Eventually, the IOIS would structurally be more favorable to cooperatives capable of taking part in technical discussions and influencing them, in order to make the most efficient use of the data extracted from their environment. It could participate in consolidating injustices of redistribution, through a concentration of wealth within some powerful cooperatives while leaving a smaller piece of the cake to those who are technologically weaker. By extension, organizations refusing to comply with rules decided by the standardization body, would simply be excluded from the IOIS and the wealth generated.

Using Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice, we may be concerned about the affirmative nature of an IOIS based on interoperability standards that would be specific to cooperative organizations. This leads us to the following question: how can we build a cooperative IOIS as a transformative remedy to social injustices?

According to Fraser, building transformative remedies requires analyzing the mechanisms generating social injustices, whose roots can be identified in their cultural dimension. As stated above, we identified the dispossession of personal data as a cultural injustice, expressing a lack of recognition towards people's rights to control over their data. Building on this assumption, an IOIS aiming for social justice would adopt foundations that empower individuals in regaining control over their personal data. This objective entails a change of paradigm, which requires a holistic action including awareness-raising and training programs, so that individuals become conscious and capable of developing the necessary skills and knowledge to manage their data. From cooperatives' point of view, personal data should not be considered as an external resource to extract and capitalize from: rather, it should be apprehended as a resource detained by individuals, who may decide to put at disposal of a cooperative to better serve their own needs and interests. Beyond such normative and cognitive dimensions, the IOIS's technical foundations should be designed accordingly: for instance, it could consider that instead of giving up their data to service providers, individuals would store their personal data in a separate server which would act as a virtual portfolio. Such a portfolio being placed under the exclusive control of individuals, they would be fully capable to decide which data to share with which player (Berners-Lee, 2019).

Since it is unlikely that all of us would be capable and willing to keep a physical server at home, individuals would probably choose to rely on a third party whom we would trust to keep our personal data in a safe space, just as we trust banks to keep our money. Here comes the political dimension: those who think that people should democratically control banks may also call that organizations in charge of storing our data would also be democratically controlled. This echoes the project of data cooperatives, who would allow citizens to both have individual control over their personal data, and collective control over the organization overall.

Finally, such technical foundations would not be incompatible with building IOISs exclusively composed of cooperative organizations. For instance, cooperatives may decide to pool their research and development resources only among cooperatives, as it already happens in many circumstances [START_REF] Basterretxea | Coopetition and innovation. Lessons from worker cooperatives in the Spanish machine tool industry[END_REF]. However, adopting interoperability standards exclusively made for cooperatives might limit the potential for social transformation. If platform cooperatives can extract data only from a data cooperative, and if a data cooperative can share its members' data exclusively with platform cooperatives, both sides might suffer from tremendous market losses. Besides, individuals would see the benefits of such a system only when they deal with cooperatives. However, if data cooperatives are technically able to share their members' data with any service, then the impact could be much greater: individuals would benefit from a model that ensures recognition of their rights to control personal data, public representation of their interests, and fair economic returns out of the valorization of their data.

To conclude this subsection, cooperative principle 7 claims that cooperatives should act for social justice. Nancy Fraser's theory explains that social injustices stem from social mechanisms that can be addressed only by adopting holistic approaches and implementing transformative remedies. We observed that cooperatives are not exempted from such an analysis: Crédit Agricole's case showed that a cooperative activity can be embedded in mechanisms generating social injustices, and thus contribute to reinforce such injustices. Applied to IOISs, we observed that some injustices may be rooted in the non-recognition of individuals to control their personal data, which is translated into infrastructures through proprietary standards aimed at locking users into a given system. Addressing this situation by establishing competing IOISs with standards exclusively addressed to cooperatives may consist in an affirmative remedy, which by itself would consolidate social injustices. A transformative approach could consist in addressing the mechanisms of social injustices, through data cooperatives empowering individuals in keeping control over their personal data and over the organization hosting such data. If based on open and universal interoperability standards, cooperatives (and in particular data cooperatives) would have the capacity to expand transformative IOISs, and thus to contribute to social justice beyond the cooperative movement.

b. Drawing lessons from the COVID-19 crisis

Along the previous subsection, we argued that cooperative principle 7 may call cooperatives to opt for open interoperability standards as technical foundations of their IOISs. Unfortunately, to our knowledge, no empirical studies have yet been conducted to support our theoretical propositions. We attempt to compensate for such a limitation by sharing field observations drawn from entrepreneurial activities. Obviously, personal experience may not replace proper scientific work -but they still offer a valuable ground for helping researchers to formulate hypotheses based on practitioners' experiences.

Beginning of 2020, the world was discovering COVID-19, an extremely contagious disease which threatened especially older people with risks of hospitalization and deaths. COVID-19 being an unknown disease, health authorities had little capacity to detect, anticipate and prevent its spread. Consequently, as many countries around the world, France saw a surge in hospitalizations, and national authorities had to declare a national lockdown. This situation created unprecedented pressures over organizations providing assistance to elderly people, more specifically healthcare providers and civil society organizations.

We especially identified two types of pressures expressed by professional and volunteer elderly care organizations. First, organizations met difficulties in tackling new needs created by the pandemics. Older people who were usually autonomous or quasi-autonomous, suddenly were unable to access basic services (grocery shopping, pharmacies…) without putting themselves at risk of contamination. In addition, older people's relatives became themselves potential sources of contamination, creating needs for social distanciation. Consequently, elderly care organizations were facing unprecedented demands for assistance (Nations Unies, 2020). Second, as huge numbers of healthcare professionals contracted COVID-19 and had to be quarantined, healthcare organizations were facing a sudden scarcity of human resources [START_REF] Dares | Résultats de l'enquête flash Covid-19 auprès des organismes de services à la personne-novembre 2020[END_REF].

COVID-19 also saw extensive expressions of collective solidarity. Crowds of citizens volunteered to provide assistance to vulnerable populations (France 24, 2021, p. 24). Established civil society organizations, governmental agencies, and newly created citizens groups, attempted to identify and mobilize volunteers to compensate for the lack of available professional resources. Numerous online platforms emerged, asking citizens to leave their contact details and creating pools of available volunteers (France Bénévolat, s. d.). Yet, such initiatives met a key bottleneck: although the platforms were successful in identifying and mobilizing volunteers, they did not have access to the data about elderly people and their needs. Consequently, resources could not meet the demand (SESAN, s. d.).

Interestingly, several IOISs already existed in the healthcare sector. For instance, the French cooperative Groupe Up exploits an application called Dôme, an IOIS automating the exchange of data among thousands of care providers, care beneficiaries, and families. Thus, data about beneficiaries and their needs was already available in a digitally exploitable format. Unfortunately, Dôme IOIS was built upon its own interoperability standards. Consequently, Dôme IOIS and civil society organizations' platforms were unable to exchange data, which would have allowed them to quickly identify emerging needs and mobilize volunteers. Since data was already existing, the solution was not much to generate more data, i.e. to establish more systems or platforms. Instead, Dôme and civil society organizations needed to be able to interconnect their respective information systems.

We had the opportunity to work with Dôme, and design a project which consisted in implementing open interoperability standards enabling the Dôme platform to interconnect and exchange data with civil society organizations' information systems (Dôme, s. d.). The project was proposed to national authorities, who unfortunately (and quite logically) preferred to invest into commodities which were highly needed (production of masks and hydroalcoolique gel). In other words, although the need to interconnect different solutions was commonly agreed, this should have been anticipated before the crisis. The healthcare system showed good resiliency overall: citizens' mobilization eventually managed to provide needed products to older people in need. But this positive ending should not make us forget about a long period of confusion, marked by older people who were lost, isolated, and even sometimes abused by scammers who took advantage of their vulnerability.

CONTRIBUTIONS AND LIMITATIONS

With this research, we hope to make a dual contribution. From an academic point of view, the paper is situated in two emerging streams of research: metaorganizations and social justice. As for meta-organization theory, we aimed to address Ahrne and Brunsson's concern, according to whom meta-organizations would be under-studied because of a structural inertia making them poorly interesting for researchers [START_REF] Ahrne | Organizations and meta-organizations[END_REF]. We hope that our reflection contributes to show that meta-organizations can be active contributors to shape innovative strategies in the context of digital transition. With respect to the theory of social justice, we aim to contribute in its application to the management field.

More specifically, we build upon [START_REF] Audebrand | All Equal in Death? Fighting inequality in the contemporary funeral industry[END_REF] observations, demonstrating how cooperative associations could develop remedies towards social injustices: we add a component which could help researchers in analyzing the nature of such remedies, namely whether they consist of affirmative or transformative action.

In addition, our paper is intended to help cooperative practitioners in anticipating the digital transition. While the emergence of digital technologies puts pressure on cooperative businesses, such a change of paradigm cannot be addressed only at an organizational level. Our reflection stresses on the fact that cooperatives may constitute a collective capacity to resist the emergence of powerful businesses based on IOISs, by building cooperative IOISs. It also warns cooperatives about the risks and limitations that may stem from collective strategies motivated only by organizing competition towards market-driven logic. We argued that a collective strategy integrating transformative action aiming for social justice could generate additional positive impacts for cooperatives and their members, by deactivating deeper mechanisms that may be favorable to capitalist businesses in the long run.

Our research is intrinsically limited by its exploratory and theoretical nature, although we used examples drawn from literature review, online research, and field experience. To overcome this limitation, these reflections could be complemented with a literature review aimed at identifying factors influencing meta-organizations in their decision-making processes. Some structural factors (e.g.: size, age and sector of activity) could influence the capacity of a cooperative association to engage in a digital project in the first place, and by extension its tendency to opt for proprietary or open standards. Then, such a theoretical framework would need to be tested, challenged and complemented with empirical research. A comparison among cooperative associations could help to inform us about the structural factors as stated before.

In addition, a comparison between cooperative associations and other meta-organizations could help to identify cooperative specificities, and thus verify whether the cooperative identity (in particular cooperation among cooperative) constitutes a tangible asset for cooperative businesses to apprehend the digital transition.

INTRODUCTION

CONCLUSION

This exploratory research is aimed at setting foundations for the development of a theoretical framework for understanding how cooperative associations could lead to the emergence of a cooperative inter-organizational information system (IOIS). It focused on the mechanisms to be taken into consideration when establishing the technical foundation of an IOIS, namely diffusing interoperability standards within a pre-existing organizational field.

In a first section, we highlighted how the nature of interoperability standards (open or proprietary) shape an IOIS and, by extension, the overall inter-organizational relations in the organizational field. We also identified some cooperative associations' assets enabling them to select and diffuse interoperability standards among their members. In a second section, we attempted to identify how the cooperative identity may influence cooperative associations in opting for open or proprietary standards when aiming to build a cooperative IOIS. We posited that cooperative principles 6 and 7 could generate contradicting dynamics. "Cooperation among cooperatives" could lead cooperative associations to adopt a protective posture which would entail locking the data within their field, and thus to select and diffuse proprietary standards. However, "concern for the community" could encourage cooperative associations to aim for a social transformation approach, which could be translated into open interoperability standards. We also pointed out that cooperative IOISs based on proprietary standards found themselves intrinsically limited in a situation of crisis, such as COVID-19 lockdowns, and argued that such an experience should encourage cooperative associations to consider preferring open interoperability standards. This report is addressed to a dual audience. On the one hand, we hope to provide the academic community with a conceptual framework highlighting the role of cooperative associations to establish a digital infrastructure for the cooperative movement, as well as some tensions which might influence their strategic decisions. On the other hand, although theoretical, the paper may be found useful by practitioners willing to upscale the platform cooperativism movement through common interoperability standards. This report was conducted within a broader Ph.D. project, and will be complemented with future research and academic publications.

  observed that the Nebraska Cooperative Council (NCC), a U.S. cooperative association, conducted an information campaign to raise awareness among agricultural cooperative leaders of the opportunities and challenges of an emerging technology based on open interoperability standards: Internet. The NCC built and promoted a digital cooperative culture, backed by a training program on how to get started with Internet tools. This allowed the cooperative association to coordinate cooperatives' behavior of these communities towards the innovation and encourage the adoption of its standards.The current digital revolution has led cooperative associations to deploy a vast array of strategic activities aimed at supporting the cooperative movement in conducting its digital transition. The ICA and its regional offices have for instance: conducted research on cooperative-based collaborative economy innovations[START_REF] Cousin | A Cooperative Vision for the Collaborative Economy : Shaping a people-centered and democratic collaborative economy[END_REF]; organized advocacy events aimed at encouraging policymakers to adopt legislations and design programs favoring cooperative digital transition and innovation (Cooperatives Europe, 2017); delivered capacity-building sessions aimed at supporting cooperative digital entrepreneurship (International Co-operative Alliance, 2020; International Co-operative Alliance Asia and Pacific, s. d.).Those activities may eventually lead to the establishment of cooperative IOISs: the ICA developed an experimental decentralized knowledge base as an IOIS for standardizing and facilitating the exchange of pedagogical resources among mentors (Cooperatives Europe, 2020). As argued in the introduction, a number of IOISs are already existing and being maintained by second-level cooperatives and cooperative associations. Cooperative groups are typically equipped with automated systems allowing to circulate the information among their different branches and along their supply chains. Cooperative IOISs appear to exist in virtually all economic sectors, such as banking (Desjardins in Canada, The Co-operative Bank in the United Kingdom, Rabobank in the Netherlands…), retail (e.g.: IntelliStore Head office software, commercialized by VME Coop to centralize control among branches (VME Coop, 2022)), and agriculture (e.g.: ScotEID, a collective database for agricultural cooperatives managed by the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society (SAOS, s. d.)).

INCORPORATING COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES WITHIN AN IOIS: OPENING OR CLOSING?

Healthcare is only one sector where the cooperative movement demonstrated its inability to tackle COVID-19 impacts due to an absence of common open interoperability standards. We can also mention the unprecedented development of Amazon, who benefited from a situation where local shops had to close down and were unable to deploy an online e-commerce platform -due to the lack of open interoperability among their respective information systems.

In sum, choosing open interoperability standards to build cooperative IOISs is certainly a matter of values -acting in favor of social justice -but also of resilience. In a world of uncertainties resulting from climate change and rising inequalities, we cannot expect to build the one single platform that will be able to ensure the cooperative movements' long-term viability: rather, cooperatives' collective resilience will rely upon their capacity to act as flexible network, capable to tackle unforeseen situations by quickly interconnecting their respective systems beyond traditional organizational borders.