Governance and controversies within and around growing mid-scale organic chains: how are shared values maintained over time?

Summary

Based on the comparison of a dozen case studies within the Healthygrowth project (cooperatives, box schemes, organic shops network etc.), this paper aims at exploring which mechanisms of governance and coordination within growing mid-scale organic initiatives and their surrounding network allow (or not) to maintain strong shared values alongside the upscaling and growth process. We first analyse the competing conceptions over values and the possible controversies among the different stakeholders involved in these initiatives: do they want “just” organic products or more, i.e. for example local and seasonal products, or ‘fair’ products coming from small scale peasant farms etc.? We then analyse the initiatives’ governance, who it involves (shareholders or leaders, but also employees, consumers, producers, civil society etc.?) and how; as well as the relationships and coordination with business partners (contracts, agreements and arrangements with producers, processors, etc.). We show that the initiatives can reach a certain degree of stakeholders and network alignment thanks to the way they set up and then often adjust over time their governance and their coordination modes in order to maintain their values. In some cases, it seems that behind a visible convergence of the different stakeholders’ views, “objective” power relationships partly explain such an alignment (for example, producers might disagree with some aspects but cannot really influence), but most cases reveal the necessity to maintain an openness to discussions and debates over the core values.