Food safety has become a major development challenge and a key influence on the strategic behavior of food companies. The study seeks to analyze the effect of perceived institutional pressures on the governance of food safety and the effect this may have on food safety performance in emerging food supply chains. The research develops a conceptual framework that links perceived institutional pressures, degree of food manufacturer-supplier relationships, food safety practices, and food safety output. The hypothesized relationships were tested in the (...) Middle Eastern context, where food safety concerns are rising. Accordingly, a survey was carried out to collect data from food quality/safety managers representing 94 food processors across Lebanon. The study finds that perceived institutional pressures have a direct and strong effect on the degree of integration in the agro-food supply chain, and such an integration, in turn, increases the intensity of food safety practices and food safety performance. However, in the absence of strong manufacturer-supplier relationships, perceived institutional pressures do not lead to improved food safety performance. The study suggests that long-term food manufacturer-supplier relationship is necessary if agro-food chain actors are to respond to established regulatory demands, industry practices, and social norms. (shrink)

Aspirations to farm ‘better’ may fall short in practice due to constraints outside of farmers’ control. Yet farmers face proliferating pressures to adopt practices that align with various societal visions of better agriculture. What happens when the accumulation of external pressures overwhelms farm management capacity? Or, worse, when different visions of better agriculture pull farmers toward conflicting management paradigms? This article addresses these questions by comparing the institutional manifestations of two distinct societal obligations placed on California fruit and vegetable farmers: (...) to practice sustainable agriculture and to ensure food safety. Drawing on the concept of constrained choice, I define and utilize a framework for comparison comprising five types of institutions that shape farm management decisions: rules and standards, market and supply chain forces, legal liability, social networks and norms, and scientific knowledge and available technologies. Several insights emerge. One, farmers are expected to meet multiple societal obligations concurrently; when facing a “right-versus-right” choice, farmers are likely to favor the more feasible course within structural constraints. Second, many institutions are designed to pursue narrow or siloed objectives; policy interventions that aim to shift farming practice should thus anticipate and address potential conflicts among institutions with diverging aspirations. Third, farms operating at different scales may face distinct institutional drivers in some cases, but not others, due to differential preferences for universal versus place-specific policies. These insights suggest that policy interventions should engage not just farmers, but also the intersecting institutions that drive or constrain their farm management choices. As my framework demonstrates, complementing the concept of constrained choice with insights from institutional theory can more precisely reveal the dimensions and mechanisms that bound farmer agency and shape farm management paradigms. Improved understanding of these structures, I suggest, may lead to novel opportunities to transform agriculture through institutional designs that empower, rather than constrain, farmer choice. (shrink)

By introducing the theory of social co-governance into the field of e-commerce intellectual property protection, this paper builds an evolutionary game model among the government, e-commerce platforms, and rights holders, and studies the conditions under the stakeholders form a stable equilibrium state under different constraints. Combined with numerical simulation, the influence of individual factors and factor combinations on the system stability is analyzed. Results shows that: Strictly controlling the action costs and response costs of all parties can enhance their willingness (...) to actively deal with infringement issues; reasonable adjustment of the reward and punishment measures of government supervisory agencies can produce sufficient reverse shock and positive guidance to platform and operators; penalties should be imposed on government supervisory agencies that are not sufficiently supervised; strengthen the construction of the social environment for intellectual property protection, improve the social benefits of actively responding to infringement issues, and increase the sense of acquisition by the government, platforms and rights holders. And it provides certain positive references and suggestions for the government to formulate relevant policies. (shrink)