Biography
Pieter Steenbergen obtained his Master’s degree in Social and Economic History from Leiden University in 1983. Between 1978 and 2017, he worked as a teacher (mostly in General Economics) at several high schools and at a teachers training institute. He was also member of the management team, and in that capacity responsible for school administration, exams, and quality management. In March 2017, he retired and after two months crossing the USA by bike, he presented himself as volunteer at Utrecht University, aiming to contribute to an existing research topic. When he was informed about the Institutions for Collective Action team, he offered to support this team by performing research focused on consumer co-operatives in the Netherlands. Although little has been published on this theme, this type of organization has become increasinglypopular since the 1990s. Pieter aims to fill the gap that seems to exist in publciations on this topic: e.g., in the work A global history of consumer co-operation since 1850 (eds. Mary Hilson and Greg Patmore, 2017), The Netherlands were not even mentioned. His main goal is to look for the critical success factors of consumer co-operatives.