Sustainable Innovation, Social Responsibility and Governance in the Agri-Food Value Chains

Dear Colleagues,

In the agri-food sector, innovation is a strategic driver that makes it possible to create internal economies (i.e., to reduce production costs) (Rama, 1996, 2008; Grunert et al., 1997; Capitanio et al., 2010; Marotta et al., 2017; Nazzaro et al., 2020), and to address societal challenges (Roucan-Kane et al., 2011). Moreover, at present the agri-food companies must be able to meet citizen-consumers’ needs, increasingly attentive to important issues such as the food–health relationship, the fight against climate change, the depletion of natural resources, hydrogeological instability, and the loss of the landscape (Traill and Meulenberg, 2002; Marotta and Nazzaro, 2012, 2020). In order to satisfy these new kinds of needs, the innovation process in food supply chains has become necessary and has oriented the choices of companies towards investments in sustainable innovations and social responsibility. The use of these innovations has made it possible to improve the quality and safety of food products and to make production processes more sustainable, in order to reduce the consumption of materials, the CO₂ emissions, and more generally, the environmental impacts. Moreover, process and product innovation in food systems are also being channeled toward the enhancement of the health characteristics of food as a critical dimension of sustainability (Lindgreen et al., 2018). Therefore, the sustainable innovations have pushed companies to base their competitiveness on new business models driven increasingly by socially responsible behaviors (Gallego-Alvarez et al., 2011; Marotta et al., 2017; Nazzaro et al., 2020).
At same time, in order to respond effectively to new questions from citizen-consumers, it is necessary that all companies in the same supply chain act according to socially responsible criteria, adopting sustainable innovations. Indeed, citizen-consumers evaluate foods as a whole, keeping in mind all the choices and operations that take place within the value chain, starting from the raw materials used up to the transformation process that leads to the realization of the final product (Ahumada and Villalobos, 2009). This raises specific coordination issues which have to be defined and solved in order to increase the degree of sustainability of the whole chains.
Therefore, it is necessary to create new coordination methods among different phases of the value chain, which therefore stimulates the reconsideration of governance models among the different actors (Karantininis et al., 2010; Martino, 2010). Generally, governance refers to a set of rules governing transactions between the parties to an exchange—some of which are defined by law, others by social conventions.
Starting from these considerations, the analysis of sustainable innovations, social responsibility strategies, and contractual relationships as tools for value chains creation in the agri-food sector seems to be a field that is still under exploration, leaving plenty of room for further research.
Therefore, this Special Issue will offer findings that address the topic of sustainable innovations and social responsibility in agri-food value chains and the coordination problems within them. Manuscripts describing new research, new summaries, and new theories are welcome.

Prof. Giuseppe Marotta
Prof. Gaetano Martino
Prof. Concetta Nazzaro
Guest Editors

References:

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• innovation
• sustainability
• social responsibility
• transaction costs
• governance
• value chains