In an increasingly digital environment that results in the technological advance of the fourth Industrial Revolution, it becomes interesting to understand the agribusiness success in a digital economy. The purpose of this chapter is to develop a theoretical framework for agribusiness success in Industry 4.0, so that future empirical research could be carried out. The research uses a literature review based on business success. First, it is essential to explore business success and then its determinants. Based on a holistic approach, a new conceptual model for agribusiness success is developed in three dimensions: growth, productivity, and performance, whether enterprises use e-business or not. The researcher suggests the impact of e-commerce, internationalization, strategic alignment, and managers characteristics as explanatory variables of the agribusiness success. The theoretical framework provides a different way forward for both managers and business advisors about what are the agribusiness success and those factors that may explain it.
TopIntroduction
Over time, agricultural enterprises face a number of challenges in order to succeed. In the context of the area under investigation, Boehlje, Akridge, and Kalaitzandonakes (2002, p. 31) refer that:
“Successful agribusinesses will face eight key challenges in the agriculture of the future: globalization, adding value, achieving profitability, defining organizational capabilities, adapting to change, dealing with technological innovation, securing competence and intellectual capital, and achieving organizational transformation.”
In an increasingly digital environment that results in the technological advance of the fourth industrial revolution, referred as Industry 4.0, it becomes interesting to understand the agribusiness success in the Portuguese context, whether enterprises use e-business1 or not, because all over the world business and government are preparing for this transformation.
The present research may be relevant in a country such as Portugal, because this country has been experiencing a serious economic crisis and to understand the success could be necessary for the agricultural sector to be competitive in an economy digital and boost economic growth. Another reason is that there has been a growth in agricultural production in Portugal in recent years, due to incentives through project funding and government support for the unemployed and young people. However, the lack of competitiveness becomes a problem of the agribusiness sector of Portugal. In this context, it is important to discover and analyze factors with impact on the agricultural business success, so that managers have more information available that can be useful for the definition of future strategies, in order to be more successful.
Given the importance of agribusiness success in a digital economy, the aim of this chapter is to develop a theoretical framework for agribusiness success in Industry 4.0. centered on a holistic approach. The researcher prepares a review of relevant literature on the subject, based on the knowledge of multiple disciplines that contribute to understanding the agribusiness success. The literature review reveals a wide range of research on growth, productivity or performance business and therefore on success. In addition, many of the models in the literature on success focus only on the impact of alignment on success, on e-commerce or only on companies that adopt e-commerce, in internationalization and characteristics of the entrepreneur/CEO/manager along with other organizational and environmental factors. However, these factors of success aggregates may be relevant to agricultural business success, whether they use e-business or traditional business.
Although success is a subject discussed in the literature, it is not yet clearly developed for agribusiness sector and this can be important for the national economy. In agribusiness, Clasen and Mueller (2006) analyze the impact of market characteristics on success for companies included in digital markets. The lack of research in this area and the focus of author's interest in the agricultural sector motivated this research.
This article contributes to research on success, since it develops a conceptual model of success for agribusiness, in three dimensions: growth, productivity and performance, based on a holistic approach. Having a broader view than the models found in the literature on success and suitable for companies that use e-business or not, in the specific context of agribusiness.
This chapter is structured as follows: the next section presents a synthesis review of the literature on measures for business success. The second section explores determinants with impact on business success. The third section presents the future research directions. The final section provides discussion and a few concluding remarks.