Agribusiness, Sustainable Development and CSR (Agribusiness)

Agricultural Engineering and Risk Management

This theme focuses on the modeling of risk in agribusinesses. Two risk dimensions are studied in this research theme: the commodities markets prices fluctuations and the climate risk. Their potential impact on the supply chain and the agribusiness companies’ performances will be estimated and the hedging strategies for reducing it considered.

Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior

This research specializes in food consumption research, i.e. social and cultural aspects of consumption (food trends, food and retailing behaviours) and contexts (such as tourism), psychological issues (attitudes, decision making…) and digital influences on food consumption (food apps, food porn…). This theme includes consumer related food research topics with a clear positioning around the strengths of the Brittany region and the competencies of Rennes SB researchers.

Innovating in Agribusiness

This research focuses on the three aspects of the inputs, the processes, and the outcomes of innovating in agribusiness. Ten topics have been selected because of the current relevance in the innovation management literature: (i) Input for innovating in agribusiness (knowledge dynamics, knowledge transfers, and firms’ knowledge-based view in agribusiness); (ii) Innovation ecosystem in agribusiness; (iii) Business Model Innovation in agribusines); (iv) Processes for innovating in agribusiness (Multi-level Organizational, team, and individual ambidexterity in agribusiness; (v) Absorptive and desorptive capacity in agribusiness; (vi) Outside-in and inside-out open Innovation in agribusiness; (vii) Innovative strategic alliances in agribusiness; (viii) Outcomes from innovating in agribusiness (Radical/incremental innovation in agribusiness; (ix) Disruptive/ sustaining innovation in agribusiness; (x) Innovation performance in agribusiness). All those topics are currently requiring further research in innovation management. In particular, we note the absence of empirical studies in agribusiness, in contrast to other industries, such has the semi-conductor, cars, and knowledge intensive business services.

Sustainable & Responsible Agribusiness

Investigate “agricultural externalities”, that is, agriculture’s positive and negative externalities stemming from and geared towards three main stakeholders: (i) organizations, for instance work organizations such as cooperatives and businesses or societal organizations such governmental agencies, (ii) humans, such as peasants or consumers, and (iii) non-humans such as land or animals.

Research themes

Associate professor

• Claire-Lise ACKERMANN: Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
• Ricardo AZAMBUJA: Sustainable & Responsible Agribusiness
• Guillaume BAGNAROSA (research affiliate INRAe – (UMR SMART) Agricultural Policy and Operations Engineering
• Laurence FORT-RIOCHE: Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
• Youenn LOHEAC (Research associate): Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
• Sheila MATSON BARKAT: Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
• Laurent SCARINGELLA: Innovating in Agribusiness

Senior Lecturer

• Shubho CHAKRABORTY: Innovating in Agribusiness

Post-doc

• Ioannis CHALKIADAKIS: Agricultural Policy and Operations Engineering

Affiliate Professors

• Jean Cordier (Prof. Emeritus Economics): Agricultural Engineering & Risk Management
• Mark Cummins, (Management, InstitutAgro, Univerity of Strathclyde): Agricultural Engineering & Risk Management
• Cele Otnes (Prof. Emeritus Business Administration – Gies; College of Business – University of Illinois – USA): Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior

PhD students

• Thibaud Garnier
• Morgane Loquen
• Romain Menier
• Michaël Pouliquen

• Bagnarosa, G., Cummins, M., Dowling, M., & Kearney, F. (2022). Commodity risk in European dairy firms. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 49(1), 151-181.
• Chédotal C., Lohéac Y. (2022). Comment les nudges influencent les comportements alimentaires?, in Crié D., Gallopel-Morvan K. (eds) Marketing social et nudges, Editions E.M.S., (pp.175-182)
• Conlon, T., Cotter, J., Eyiah-Donkor, E. (2022) The illusion of oil return predictability: The choice of data matters!, Journal of Banking & Finance, Volume 134, 2022, 106331
• Gao, S., Bagnarosa, G., Dowling, M., Matkovskyy, R., & Tawil, D. (2022). Price transmission in European fish markets. Applied Economics, 54(19), 2194-2213.
• Matson-Barkat, S., Robert-Demontrond, P., & Otnes, C. (2022). From plate to place: the role of restaurant servicescapes in the development of tourists’ place meanings in Brittany, France. Tourism Recreation Research, 47(3), 316-331.
• Nouira, I., Hammami, R., Arias, A. F., Gondran, N., & Frein, Y. (2022). Olive oil supply chain design with organic and conventional market segments and consumers’ preference to local products. International Journal of Production Economics, 247, 108456.
• Teichert, T., Wörfel, P., & Ackermann, C. L. (Forthcoming). Casual snacking as an automatic process: a grounded cognition framework. British Food Journal.
• Tisserand, J. C., Hopfensitz, A., Blondel, S., Loheac, Y., Mantilla, C., Mateu, G., … & Sutan, A. (2022). Management of common pool resources in a nation-wide experiment. Ecological Economics, 201, 107566.
• Cragg, T., & McNamara, T. (2021). Mechanized zones in food regional distribution centres: a sustainability case study. Sustainable and Green Supply Chains Case Study Collection, Kogan Page Publishers, ISBN 978-1789668216.
• de Kervenoael, R., Schwob, A., Hasan, R., & Ting, Y. S. (2021). Consumers’ perceived value of healthier eating: A SEM analysis of the internalisation of dietary norms considering perceived usefulness, subjective norms, and intrinsic motivations in Singapore. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 20(3), 550-563.
• Espinosa, R., & Stoop, J. (2021). Do people really want to be informed? Ex-ante evaluations of information-campaign effectiveness. Experimental Economics, 24(4), 1131-1155.
• Espinosa, R., & Treich, N. (2021). Animal welfare: Antispeciesism, veganism and a “life worth living”. Social Choice and Welfare, 56(3), 531-548.
• Espinosa, R., & Treich, N. (2021). Moderate versus radical NGOs. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 103(4), 1478-1501.
• Truong, Y., Mazloomi, H., & Berrone, P. (2021). Understanding the impact of symbolic and substantive environmental actions on organizational reputation. Industrial Marketing Management, 92, 307-320.
• Hudson, S., Moore Mangin, A. (2021) Ecoshamps: Tackling the Plastics Challenge. The Case Center, 721-0041-1, 3 June 2021, Emerald.
• La Rocca, A., & Snehota, I. (2021). Mobilizing suppliers when starting up a new business venture. Industrial Marketing Management, 93, 401-412.
• Moore Mangin, A., Hudson, S. (2021) How can agriculture attract, retain and protect Migrant workers during a World Health Crisis. The Case Center 421-0090-1 , 7 October 2021, Emerald.
• Schneckenberg, D., Benitez, J., Klos, C., Velamuri, V. K., & Spieth, P. (2021). Value creation and appropriation of software vendors: A digital innovation model for cloud computing. Information & Management, 58(4), 103463.
• Siddique, M. A., Akhtaruzzaman, M., Rashid, A., & Hammami, H. (2021). Carbon disclosure, carbon performance and financial performance: International evidence. International Review of Financial Analysis, 75, 101734.
• Ames, M., Bagnarosa, G., Matsui, T., Peters, G. W., & Shevchenko, P. V. (2020). Which risk factors drive oil futures price curves?. Energy Economics, 87, 104676.
• Baraldi, E., La Rocca, A., Perna, A., & Snehota, I. (2020). Connecting IMP and entrepreneurship research: Directions for future research. Industrial Marketing Management, 91, 495-509.
• Cornée, S., Le Guernic, M., & Rousselière, D. (2020). Governing common-property assets: Theory and evidence from agriculture. Journal of Business Ethics, 166(4), 691-710.
• Hernandez, J. A., Uddin, G. S., Dutta, A., Ahmed, A., & Kang, S. H. (2020). Are ethanol markets globalized or regionalized?. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 551, 124094.
• Goswami, M., De, A., Habibi, M. K. K., & Daultani, Y. (2020). Examining freight performance of third-party logistics providers within the automotive industry in India: An environmental sustainability perspective. International Journal of Production Research, 58(24), 7565-7592.
• Lohéac, Y. (2020). Hunger and intertemporal decisions: Experimental literature and empirical illustration. Revue Economique, 71(1), 195-207.
• Marowka, M., Peters, G. W., Kantas, N., & Bagnarosa, G. (2020). Factor‐augmented Bayesian cointegration models: a case‐study on the soybean crush spread. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics), 69(2), 483-500.

The combination of the Agribusiness expertise of our faculty members as well as the other local academic partners on this field and Brittany’s strong agricultural economy constitutes a unique opportunity to attract corporate interest, to contribute to the international academic research and eventually to propose to our students relevant and innovative programs related to the highly innovative and central agro-food industry with in the background one of the most important environmental challenge of our time.

Regarding the School’s ecosystem, agro-food and environmental industry are the leading industrial sector in Brittany. With 43% of the companies and a third of the industrial jobs, the agrifood industry has experienced significant growth in Brittany over the past twenty-five years: processing of animal protein (meat, fish, milk), vegetable production, animal feed. We meet local professional challenges: distinctive skills, innovative courses and new outstanding alliances. Furthermore, the development ambitions of our research centre have not been just local but have also targeted other regions and countries keen to benefit from this expertise. Indeed, we increase the embedded character of the School in the local economy in an area of vital importance to the region with research contracts with the three largest agribusiness companies of the region.

The Centre has developed a global research reputation in a fast-growing area of academic and economic benefit. The Centre is also helping in building stable links with local and international research institutions such as:

• Institut Agro Rennes-Angers
• Rennes-1 University
• Rennes-2 University
• ESA
• INRAe
• CNRS
• IMT
• Wageningen
• Zayed University
• UCD
• DCU

Project funding

• Region Bretagne (with Valorial)
• Rennes Metropole
• ANRT
• Saipol
• Eureden
• Avril group
• INRAe

The Centre raised 643,000 € in external funding for research project: 3 PhDs are funded by the ANRT and companies, Rennes Metropole, Brittany Region, Zayed University and INRAe.

Research seminars

QMCM (Quantitative Modelling in Commodity Markets) meeting every two weeks, 15 persons. The Centre is coorganising research seminars with INRAe and inviting its INRAe and DCU colleagues to the Quantitative Modeling of Commodities Prices seminars.

Following our joint agreement with INRAe, the agribusiness AoE members are participating to the weekly Agricultural Economics research seminars of the INRAe in Rennes and Paris

Research workshops

Jointly with the CUT: Conference on Agribusiness and Sustainable Agriculture (CASA) twice a year

Conferences

During the Affi 2022 (French Association in Finance): we organised a Round table and a Special Session on Agri-finance with guest speakers from Avril Group, INRAe, ESSEC and FAO

PhD service

Rennes SB PhD (Food Economics + Advanced Qualitative Methods 2 x 30h)
Three CIFRE Doctoral scholarships with Avril group, Saipol and Eureden
Co-direction with DCU / UCD
Beta, University of Lorraine in Strasbourg: PhD joint supervision
UMR SMART (INRAe – Institut Agro)

Dr Guillaume BAGNAROSA

surname.name@rennes-sb.com