Inclusive businesses (IBs) resonate with policymakers seeking to leverage private capital in support of poverty alleviation and sustainable development. In the agri-food sector, which represents the largest segment of the base-of-the-pyramid (BOP) market and a key source of livelihood for the rural poor, there is limited evidence on their diversity and social value creation mechanisms. This prevents practitioners from identifying impactful IB types and design features. A statistical analysis of 46 cases in Tanzania and Ghana identified four IB types: (1) self-reliant agribusinesses, (2) domestic plantation companies, (3) social enterprises, and (4) locally-embedded Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Our findings suggest that socially-driven and localized IBs hold high impact potential but require significant external support, while more self-sufficient IBs adopt less socially innovative designs. This study demonstrates the utility of a data-driven approach to capture the complexity of real-world IBs, which yielded practical insights for more effective poverty alleviation through business means.
Tag: agribusiness
Smallholder value creation in agrifood chains: Value network approach
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.
To much of the development community, improving the inclusiveness of agrifood chains demands private institutional innovations that attenuate market failures confronting smallholders. How and how well such innovations contribute to sustainable rural development is still poorly understood, however, with research to date insufficiently generalizable to inform policy and practice. This partly stems from excessive reliance on instrumental and lead firm-centric perspectives on value creation that fail to recognize the complex organizational networks required to include, empower, and upgrade smallholders. To improve the explanatory capacity of existing theories and approaches, this article reconceptualizes how smallholders and other chain and non-chain actors derive value from participating in agrifood chains. Our ‘value networks’ inspired approach helps scholars and evaluators investigate and causally attribute how different types of value are created and captured through different types of private institutional innovations. We furthermore demonstrate how the approach can be used to generate the knowledge needed to advance business practice, development policy, and global value chain, global production network, and household theories.