Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824
Performing Department
Agricultural, Food, & Resource Economics
Non Technical Summary
Long term sustainability of the economy critically depends on the speed with which the current economic system moves from unsustainable resource use patterns toward sustainable and renewable sources, from myopic profit maximization oriented businesses toward socially and environmentally responsible business organizations, and from development assistance toward integrated sustainable international development that includes institutional capacity building and entrepreneurship. The overarching goal of this research project is to critically analyze current public policies, technologies and business systems with a long-term sustainability lens, and to develop improved policies, decision tools and practices.The first theme of this research aims to analyze sustainability management practices and trends in agri-food firms, and develop improved policies, analytical tools and practices.Example topics include sustainability accounting, environmental finance, life cycle assessment, environmental marketing, sustainability management systems, new business models for renewable energy, ecosystem services, and closing the material loops through recycling, etc. Increasing environmental variability also necessitates building resiliency in supply chains, infrastructure and organizational strategies. Another major recent development is the emergence of social media as a strong force that is simultaneously affecting corporate as well as stakeholder behavior and strategies. This research theme also aims to address issues relating to social media and big data analytics in sustainability management.A second theme of this research takes a "Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP)" approach to international development and agribusiness strategy. The BOP approach views serving the needs of over 4-5 billion extremely poor consumers mostly in rural areas and less developed countries who are stuck in high cost ecosystems, as the biggest untapped market and the next business frontier. Agri-food business and international development strategies need to develop new approaches, organizational designs, and creative business models to exploit these BOP market opportunities for US producer firms, and to meet the millennium sustainable development goals (SDG). This research aims to analyze drivers of successful BOP business strategies and development policies, and develop insights and recommendations for future policy-making and business strategy development.The proposed work is directly relevant to the following priority Knowledge Areas of AgBioResearch.KA 601, Economics of Agricultural production and Farm Management; especially sustainable agriculture and agricultural profitability.KA 605 Natural Resource and Environmental Economics, especially, land resource use and management, waste management, weather and climate change, and agrochemical management.KA 606 International Trade and Development, especially International economic growth and development, and Foreign market development. The insights and results from this research will be useful for agri-food-resource businesses, public policy makers, governments and international development agencies.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
This project aims to broadly address the following research questions under its two themes, namely sustainability management in businesses, and BOP business strategies.Sustainability Management in Businesses.How have firm sustainability management strategies, processes and practices evolved over time, across different industry sectors, and what are the drivers of these changes?What are the emerging business models and financing mechanisms in renewable energy technologies, environmental commodities (e.g. tradable pollution permits), ecosystem services, and green product and certification businesses?How do firms make tradeoffs among triple bottom line objectives of people, planet and profits, and short run and long run performance?How do firms measure, benchmark and compare their triple bottom line performance? How successful are the emerging global sustainability reporting initiatives?How are social media and big data analytics influencing sustainability management practices?What is the appropriate sustainable energy mix for the future? What role can businesses play in achieving that mix given the tradeoffs with respect to food supply, land use, and ecological impacts?How effective are current policy tools aimed at promoting biomaterials, remanufacturing, recycling, composting, Design for the Environment and green chemistry? What innovations are needed to improve their effectiveness?These research questions will specifically be framed to address knowledge areas KA 601, Economics of Agricultural production and Farm Management:sustainable agriculture and agricultural profitability, and KA 605 Natural Resource and Environmental Economics: especially, land resource use and management, waste management, weather and climate change, and agrochemical management. However the main mechanism will be through changing business strategies and practices. Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) Business strategiesWhat innovations in technology, products, business models and collaborations between businesses, governments and civic organizations, have been successful in meeting the BOP needs?What are the contextual, cultural, regulatory and policy drivers of success of BOP approaches especially in the agrifood business sector?How effective are traditional public policy interventions compared to private business oriented value chain interventions in the agri-food sector in achieving development goals?How can US based agri-food firms use BOP approaches to expand trade and market opportunities within US and abroad? These research questions will specifically be formulated to address knowledge area KA 606 International Trade and Development: especially International economic growth and development, and foreign market development. Again, the main mechanism explored will be changing business strategies and value chain practices instead of conventional foreign-aid and public policy interventions.
Project Methods
The above research questions will be addressed using appropriate combinations of quantitative and qualitative analyses.To illustrate, one of the research sub-projects under sustainable business theme aims to explore and analyze the role of social media in moderating and mediating the relationship between firm sustainability performance, and the firm financial performance and consequent stock market responses. The hypothesis is that social media will have significant influence on these linkages because outcomes of environmental/social responsibility are most often public goods or non-experiential credence goods that have socio-emotional appeal rather than direct effects on consumer's utility/Investor's own wealth. I plan to analyze effects of the volume of social media communications, the choice of the channel of communication, as well as the emotional content of social media communications on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts and firm financial and market performance. Statistical analyses will be tailored to the conceptualized hypotheses, meditating/moderating pathways, sampling limitations, etc. and will include: stock market event studies, generalized linear models, structural equation modeling using MIMIC techniques.In the area of BOP strategies, the goal is to assess economic, environmental and organizational performance of alternative BOP approaches in specific agri-food value chains. The initial approach will be qualitative syntheses of case studies of both successful and unsuccessful BOP initiatives. Econometric methods will be employed in evaluating socio-economic impacts of specific BOP initiatives. For example, a specific research project aims to assess the effectiveness of various value chain configurations for buffalo milk in Nepal and propose interventions. This analysis will be based on qualitative info drawn from interviews and field visits.. However, impact evaluation of proposed interventions will draw on rigorous experimental designs and quantitative data analyses.