Producers responding to environmental turbulence in the Greek agricultural supply chain: does buyer type matter?

Abstract

There are many changes in the EU Agricultural Supply Chain (ASC). These changes cause environmental turbulence for supply chain entities operating in this sector. In the Greek ASC, there is a significant decline in its performance in particular at producers’ level. Based on the Contingency Theory this paper aims to identify the relevant environmental turbulence factors in Greek ASC context from the producers’ perspective and ascertain their impact on producers based on their choice of buyer type i.e. collaboration type. Twenty in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Greek ASC producers. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews. The findings suggest the existence of six major environmental turbulence factors at producers’ level which are: regulatory, market, competitive, weather, economic and political turbulence factors. Producers selling their products to cooperatives were found to be significantly impacted by the different environmental turbulence factors. Future research directions as well as managerial and policy implications are identified.

Keywords:

• Agriculture
• collaboration
• environmental uncertainty
• producers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Food losses refer to agricultural food products that are not sold and due to their perishable nature are wasted (Despoudi 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stella Despoudi

Dr. Stella Despoudi is Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Aston Business School, Aston University, UK. Stella’s research expertise lies in the following research areas: food supply chain sustainability and resilience, food waste and food sustainability, circular economy and industry 4.0. She has been the lead investigator in research projects related to Food Supply Chain Management such as ‘Sustainability, Resilience, and the Impact of Industry 4.0 in the Food Supply Chain’. Stella’s previous work has been published in journals such as Production Planning and Control, Annals of Operations Research, International Journal of Production Research and International Journal of Information Management.

Grammatoula Papaioannou

Dr Grammatoula Papaioannou is a Lecturer in Business Statistics at the School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science and a PhD in Operational Research from Loughborough University. Her research interests focus upon optimisation techniques with emphasis on the application of combinatorial optimisation. Alongside her OR background, her interests extend in the areas of supply chain management, sustainability and firm performance. Grammatoula’s previous work has been published in journals such as European Journal of Operational Research, Annals of Operations Research, International Journal of Production Research and International Journal of Information Management.

Samir Dani

Samir Dani is Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management in Huddersfield Business School at the University of Huddersfield. Professor Dani engages widely with industry and has research interests in supply chain risks, sustainability in supply chains, and the use of technology and business models. He is currently conducting research in the use of AI techniques within supply chain decision making and the use of Blockchain technology in supply chains. He works with the food sector. He has published widely and has presented his research to both academic and practitioner audiences.