Sustainability in Agribusiness: The Impact of Societal Challenges, Technological Advancements, and Development Goals

Accomplishing sustainability in the agribusiness sector is a significant, yet time-sensitive, challenge, especially when balanced with the need to grow sufficient quantity and quality of food to keep the growing global population healthy.

Through both quantitative and qualitative methods, this book explores the extent to which the agribusiness sector is already evolving to become sustainable and the ways in which innovation in the industry can help address sustainable development goals, particularly around zero hunger, gender equality, decent work, responsible consumption and production, and climate action. The contributors to this volume address the following key questions: What are the drivers and barriers for the agribusiness sector to become sustainable? Which business models best facilitate the implementation of sustainable goals? How can we measure the extent to which the agribusiness sector is becoming more sustainable? How can the agribusiness sector leverage recent technological advancements to achieve its sustainability goals? The analysis of the sustainability challenges for the sector ranges across various facets of the industry including employment, pre-production industries, agriculture, food processing, distribution, and trade.

This book will be of significant interest to readers in agribusiness, innovation management, and sustainability.

Maria Carmela Annosi is is Senior Assistant Professor of Innovation Management and Organizational Behavior at the School of Social Sciences, Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands. She is a member of the Research Centre in Business Transformation (ReBoot), LUISS Business School. She is co-founder of DigiMetis network of WUR research experts on the analysis of socio-ecological systems in a digitalized era, inside Wageningen University and Research and she is an academic external collaborator of McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE). She is a Board Member of the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA). Her research interests are: diffusion and institutionalization of existing practices and genesis of new practices. Empirical phenomena analyzed are: Institutional transitions such as sustainability, digitalization, agility, succession in firms. She has authored articles in Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Business Research, Organization Studies, and other scholarly journals.

Francesco Paolo Appio is an Associate Professor of Innovation at SKEMA Business School (Campus Grand Paris, France) and Executive Committee member of the SKEMA AI Institute. He received a PhD in Management at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy) and visited important international institutions such as MIT Sloan, Bocconi University, KU Leuven, among others. His research is interdisciplinary and primarily focuses on: the impact of digital transformation (e.g., artificial intelligence, agile methods) on multiple levels of innovation (ecosystems, cities, organizations, teams); the microfoundations of scientific and technological breakthroughs, with a special emphasis on the role of errors and violations of institutional norms, organizational rules, and research methods; and, more recently, the role of science fiction as a source of innovation. He publishes in international academic journals such as Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning, Journal of Business Research, Technological Forecasting, and Social Change, and manages multiple special issues in leading journals such as Organization Studies, Journal of Product Innovation Management, among others.

Federica Brunetta is Associate Professor of Management and Strategy at the Luiss Business School and at the Department of Business and Management of Luiss University, in Rome. She is Vice Director of the Research Center for Business Transformation (ReBooT) and Academic Coordinator of Luiss Business School Executive Education.

Her research interests are focused on the study of strategies in highly regulated environments, digitalization and business transformation, network analysis. Her works are published, among others, in Organization Studies, Journal of Business Research, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Organizational Dynamics. She is the author of the book Institutions, Markets and Organizations published by McGrawHill and New Organizational Forms, Controls, and Institutions. Understanding the Tensions in ’Post-Bureaucratic’ Organization edited by Palgrave. She has conducted research at national and international level, presenting her works in the main conferences. She is also active in several applied research projects on these themes.

She received her PhD from the Università Cattolica, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. She also received the Distinguished Paper Award from the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management.