Sharing knowledge to increase food value chain: the introduction of DSS by supply chain leader driving farmer’s managerial cultural change

Main anthropic activities formally developed in terms of business processes, inevitably lead environmental and social consequences (IPCC, 2014). Therefore, managers, started to pay more attention to the overall corporate value created instead to the so limited profit maximization perspective (Elkington, 1994). In agri-food sector, in particular, strategic decisions making processes and yields goals have a direct and strong impact on soils, costs of production, GHGs emissions, water consumption (Miller, 2000), and human health. Moreover, these negative externalities are often combined also with: the current poor awareness of traditional farmers about environmental degradation (Merrilees 2005; Mccann 1997); a low level of advanced and sustainable business managerial capabilities (Phillipson et al. 2004); and the perception of farmers that sustainable practices could represent a costly measure, that can depress the farm economic performance, as not properly compensated by the markets (Menozzi et al. 2015). According to Hayman 2004 and Backus et al. 1997, this problems could be sometimes solved by the introduction of appropriate and valid support tools useful to drive farmers’ decisions. To this end, we have analyzed the implementation of an appropriate Decision Support Systems (DSS) alongside a durum wheat supply chain. The trigger for the elaboration and implementation of a DSS comes from the firm leader of the supply chain analyzed. So, it is introduced the concept of “supply chain leader” (SCL) which, in our view, is a company nearer to final markets and bigger than the others, with major economical competence and skills, which has the task to implement an integrated supply chain management through the managing of the relationship with all suppliers in all phases of the supply chain (Defee, 2007). For a successful supply chain management, in fact, is required a cross-functional integration (Lambert and Cooper, 2000) while a strong co-operation along the supply chain represent an important guideline for sustainability actions and economic and environmental objectives to be achieved (Ilbery and Maye, 2005). Accordingly, SCL needs to increase trust and collaboration within the supply chain, activating a changing process characterized by sharing knowledge and skills useful to improve those managerial attitudes of both farmers and other partners positioned at many network levels. Generally, farmers are characterized by managerial weakness related to low entrepreneurial attitudes and skills (Pyysiäinen et al., 2006) which could produce a myopic business programming, measurement and control of the socio-environmental impacts produced and the risks occurred. Considering these lacks, we found interesting analyzing how a SCL, which could be characterized by a typical sustainable business model, could lead a cultural managerial change at the farming level, through an unformalized capacity building process, based on the introduction of DSS with the aim to enhance the food value chain. This investigation pursues to analyze how the cultural change of farmers is driven by the knowledge created, shared and transferred by the SCL along the whole supply chain using a DSS tool. To this scope, we developed a case study identifying and analyzing those critical and virtuous issues of several steps of cooperation between typical chain actors, such as: a MED-Italian SCL in pasta production; a business innovative partner, such as ICT SME (external to the chain) and, ultimately, its suppliers, such as some Italian farmers. We first of all started to explain the cooperative virtuous cycle of transferring and sharing knowledge within chain partners defining our theoretical framework which reconsidered the Nonaka model (1990), shifting it from a single organization context (monodimensional) to a three-dimensional perspective encompassing the whole network involved Secondly, adopting a qualitative analytical approach, we conducted interviews/surveys interacting with all chain actors in order to deeply investigate the mechanisms/issues which drive (or trap) the knowledge long and in supply chain, focusing on the potential and substantial role played by the introduction and use of a typical DSS tool. Finally, we found that a DSS could be defined both as an outcome of a knowledge creation process (given by a steady interaction between a SCL and its business partner) and as a useful managerial tool which supports the knowledge transfer from the SCL to its suppliers permitting to increase at the same time the level of sustainability for each chain members and of the overall food value chain.