Critical Perspective on Agribusiness Supply Chain Management (ASCM) in Developing Nations: What are the Policy and Institutional Lessons for Developing Economies?

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore and assess literature on Supply chain management. The overarching aim is to derive institutional and policy lessons for the agribusiness sector, especially among the least developed economies. The focus is to better understand the range of supply chain initiatives prevalent in literature and how they fit into the developing nations contexts. Unpacking what supply chain initiatives exist in scholarly publications is relevant since scholarly ideas often shape institutional and policy directions and negotiations in the agricultural sector interventions. Using subjective criteria, sourcing, screening and selection of documents, and conducting qualitative analysis and validation were done. In exploring this discourse, we observe the emergence of a variety of overarching initiatives – development of short food supply chains, supply chain partnership, and supply chain integration. Findings from the study suggest that there is a need for some level of coordination of processes and activities within and between agribusiness firms in the supply chain, in order to build a stronger agribusiness subsector.