Handlungsempfehlungen zur Optimierung der "Management Guideline for Organic Food Processors" mittels Experteninterviews mit Verantwortlichen ökologisch orientierter Lebensmittelverarbeitungsunternehmen aus Deutschland

Summary

The Management Guideline for Organic Food Processors (MGOFP) developed in the ProOrg project offers comprehensive assistance to organic food producers regarding the requirements of organic processing. This thesis includes an initial analytical evaluation of the practical applicability of the MGOFP. It determines to what extent the content and structure must be optimized so that the guideline can be implemented as a management instrument in a way that is close to the everyday life of the company or division. While the optimisation process itself is not part of this work, it will be carried out in the further course of the ProOrg project.
The initial assessment was carried out using the qualitative method of expert interviews as part of the evaluation research. Responsible persons of four ecologically oriented processing companies from Germany were interviewed. These are micro- and medium-sized businesses from three processing sub-sectors that have been processing organic food and, in some cases, conventional raw materials in parallel for at least three years. The companies are members of the Association of Organic Food Processors (AöL), which commissioned this thesis.
The theoretical part consists of a selection of management tools such as norms, standards or guidelines that are used in practice by organic producers. With this background as well as assessment criteria and evaluation goals, a guideline for the structuring of the interviews has been developed. The evaluation was based on a qualitative content analysis. The most important results are listed briefly in the following:
• The need for the use of the guideline is apparent for all experts
• All experts associate a concrete benefit or added value with its use
• Its classification is seen in the area of a company‘s quality management
• Its application is assumed to take place on an annual basis as well as during training of new employees
It was also found that a large number of aspects covered by the guidelines have been implemented. This is evidence of the feasibility of the guideline. With regard to the results, it can be concluded that the current version of the guideline is already in a very high-quality format.
Nevertheless, with the help of the experts‘ entrepreneurial know-how, important insights were gathered for further optimization of content and structure. These were translated into recommendations for action and concrete measures (see Tables 2 and 3) and relate mainly to the content and to the attached checklist of the guideline in particular. It is recommended, for example, that the checklist be expanded by two additional columns for "Comments" and "Support for implementation" as well as to revise text passages that were not sufficiently comprehensible. It is also suggested to expand and concretise sections 2 "Raw materials" and 8 "Environmental management and social standards". These two topics formed the focus of all four interviews. With regard to section 8, the selection of management instruments from the theoretical part can be taken into account. With regard to structure, it is recommended to re-examine the order of the sections. In addition, it is considered useful to make a detailed analysis of all individual considerations of the experts in the optimization process and to optimize the MGOFP accordingly.
In this contract research, only an initial evaluation of the guideline was carried out by a small number of a relatively homogeneous group of interviewees. It is therefore recommended that other MGOFP target groups be taken into account. Specifically, it is recommended to include companies from other sub-processing sectors as well as companies that are not members of the AöL and newcomers to the organic sector. Once the guideline has actually been implemented in corporate practice, a further evaluation is also recommended to assess the actual effectiveness of the guideline. It is possible that further roadblocks and ambiguities will be discovered. It remains to be seen what further measures can be taken to make companies which are only doing what is absolutely necessary with regard to organic processing more sensitive to the "target" aspects of the guideline and to motivate them, too, to follow the MGOFP.