Anu Puusa

Anu Puusa is a professor of management and deputy head of department at the University of Eastern Finland Business School. She also serves as docent of management and co-operatives at LUT School of Business and Management, Lappeenranta University of Technology. Puusa's research focuses on cooperative enterprise, cooperative governance and management, expert organizations, organizational change, organizational identity, and work-community skills.

Puusa has published five textbooks, numerous journal articles, and other academic works. Her publications include chapters on "Co-operative Innovations" and "Critical Issues of Co-operative Governance in Large Co-operatives," as well as a comparative analysis of consumer cooperatives in Finland and Japan and their role in advancing sustainability. She has received the National Finnish Business School Graduates teaching award from Suomen Ekonomit, the Finnish Business School Graduates association. Her research employs a qualitative, interpretive approach, and her textbooks on qualitative research methodology are widely used by students and researchers.

Puusa is known for her advocacy of the cooperative business model as a sustainable alternative to profit-maximizing enterprises. She has addressed global audiences, including a TED Talk titled "The Case for Co-ops, the Invisible Giant of the Economy," where she discussed the cooperative model's economic and social impact. In her presentations, Puusa often references Finland's cooperative culture, noting that the country has a population of 5.5 million people holding more than 7 million cooperative memberships.

In addition to her academic work, Puusa holds several leadership roles in the cooperative movement. She serves on the board and as president of Cooperatives Europe, is a board member at the Finnish cooperative apex organization Pellervo Coop Center, and holds a vice-presidency at Pohjois-Karjalan Osuuskauppa, a regional consumer cooperative within S-Group. Puusa has also been invited to join an advisory group of the International Cooperative Alliance, contributing to the global development of cooperative identity. She is the sole representative from Finland in a 20-member expert advisory group reviewing cooperative identity, a process that has occurred only four times in the movement's history.

Through her research, teaching, governance roles, and public speaking, Puusa continues to advance the cooperative model as a force for economic democracy, sustainability, and social equity worldwide.