Stakeholder roles for fostering ambidexterity in Sub-Saharan African agricultural netchains for the emergence of multi-stakeholder cooperatives

Abstract

The Sub-Saharan African smallholder agricultural sector faces multiple and usually complex challenges, which can potentially be overcome by collective action. Smallholder farmers and other value chain stakeholders can tackle temporal, structural and contextual challenges by joining multi-level innovation networks to benefit collectively from shared information, knowledge, improved capacities and economies of scale in a process of innovation. Ambidexterity is a capability of innovation networks to balance exploration and exploitation dynamics in an innovation process, and is applicable at multiple levels: individuals, leaders, champions, teams and clusters. In the paradigm of open innovation, these levels become intertwined in hybrid social structures of innovation netchains. The objective of this paper is to describe the roles and identify the stakeholders that play those roles in an innovation process. We present case studies on farmer groups who participate in collective action and we compare multi-stakeholder platforms with other configurations of actors that tackle challenges in potato netchains in three Sub-Saharan African countries. We track and analyse innovation trajectories for six cases adapting netchain analysis techniques linking roles with the challenges faced at particular stages of each innovation trajectory. We find three management designs for fostering exploration and exploitation: (1) exploratory or exploitative management designs for small innovation networks; (2) exploitative management designs for larger networks; and (3) ambidextrous management designs for multi-stakeholder networks. Traditional roles played by managers are identified to manage exploration and exploitation in an ambidextrous way, but also evidence of roles of civil society actors facilitating collective action for the emergence of multi-stakeholder cooperatives. Since ambidexterity is about dynamism, we identified three types of mobility to be fostered when tackling challenges in an innovation process: (1) mobility-dynamism of the innovation process over time; (2) structural-knowledge mobility in innovation networks; and (3) boundary mobility.

Strategies for Sustainable Use of Indigenous Cattle Genetic Resources in Southern Africa

“…Exploring new markets, expanding existing ones, and improving market access by smallholder farmers may contribute towards sustainable use of the local breeds. In addition, introducing community-based microfinance (i.e., micro-credit, micro-savings, and micro-insurance) co-operatives, which would enable smallholder farmers to lend and/or invest money in groups, gain some bargaining power, and enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, could be of importance for sustainable use of indigenous cattle breeds [80,81].…”

Stakeholders' involvement in establishing sustainable business models

“…While not using the stakeholder theory, Vildåsen and Havenvid (2018) and Schneider and Buser (2018), concluded that relations with stakeholders play a crucial role in promoting and developing sustainability. Pérez et al (2016) studying the contribution of various stakeholders in fostering ambidexterity in net chains for tackling challenges faced by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan African countries, found that the involvement of all local stakeholders in the innovation processes is very significant and emphasize the need to identify all key players in the innovation process. The relevant role of stakeholders in entrepreneurial choices was also emphasized by Reed and Hickey (2016), resulting in a wide variation of knowledge and adoption of innovative practices across cooperative members, due to their ability to control the flow of knowledge.…”

Practices of Engagement in Innovation Platforms: Sustainably Overcoming Complex Societal Challenge Landscapes

“…Recall that most of the primary publications focused on the agricultural sector, mainly in an African context. Agriculture is a resource-intensive sector and Africa is regarded as a resource-poor setting, and Agricultural IPs are often formed to pool resources to support smallholder farming (see for example (56,67,91)). This may explain the prominence of Resources and capacity as an engagement theme in the literature.…”