SUPPLY CHAINS AS NETWORK - THE CASE OF ORGANIC PRODUCTION IN MACEDONIA

Abstract

The absence of relations between the primary producers and markets has been identified as one of the primary problems in the supply chain for producing organic products in Macedonia. Nevertheless, the organisation and network structure of the supply chains are often responsible for the economic performance, competiveness and information diffusion between the trading firms and their partners-farmers producing organic products. In this regard, analysing supply chains through social network analysis lenses helps to identify the actors and the important factors that contribute in the information diffusion across the supply chains. The aim of this paper is to identify and map the information diffusion channels of the largest distributers of organic products in Macedonia, by mapping the structure of their social networks. The Social Network Analysis includes networks on horizontal level - farmer’s decision to get involved in organic farming, or transfer the conventional production into organic, and vertical level – information provided by the distribution and trading partners in the organic value chain. The results show that information and resources are often embedded in the farmers’ personal network, however farmers producing organic products are a closed group with very few relations among themselves indicating to a low level of trust in sharing or receiving information. Most of the identified relations among the actors in the analysed network are based either on commercial basis (distributors) or friendship (other farmers). The identified absence of relations among farmers on horizontal level can seriously impede the transfer of information and decrease the motivation for entering, maintaining and introducing innovations in the organic production, thus further examination and improvement of the information channels is necessary.