Orchestrated Intervention to address Multifaceted Farmer Poverty: Cases of Digital Social Innovation

Abstract

Although existing research highlights different instances of ICT-enabled social innovation for socially disadvantaged or excluded groups, it largely overlooks how multiple facets of smallholder farmer poverty can be addressed by intermediaries through the use of digital platforms. In this paper, we discuss piecemeal, synchronized and orchestrated interventions of social intermediaries through a combined strategic framework which identifies three strategic decision levels—structuring decision, scoping decision, and symbiotic decision—that are progressive in nature in terms of strategic engagement and complexity. We argue that the present form of intermediation theory only explains the first tier of strategic decisions made by a social intermediary. The theory focuses exclusively on the depth of intermediation and not the breadth of intermediation. It offers little to explain the phenomenon of multiple interventions and, in particular, why social intermediaries internalize several interventions themselves. In the study, we illustrate three cases of social intermediaries who each makes a set of combined interventions to address multifaceted smallholder farmer poverty. We explore why and under what conditions an intermediary internalizes multiple synergistic interventions to deliver an augmented social impact and how digital technology can be leveraged during the process of implementing such interventions to bring about transformative change in marginalized settings. Our research digs deeper into the strategic orientation of social intermediaries, unveils the organizational mechanisms of internalizing the breadth, and thereby contributes to the organization-centered reasoning of the theory of intermediation.