Dynamic implications of the biological link between bovine milk and meat production for operationalizing the planetary health diet

The EAT-Lancet planetary health diet (PHD) provides guidelines on a global scale and calls for red meat consumption to be halved. Operational PHD guidelines at country level have yet to be determined. Here we argue that the biological link between milk and bovine-meat production must be considered when operationalizing the globally calculated PHD to national contexts. Using a stylized computer simulation model rooted in a food system approach, we explore the impact of dietary scenarios on milk and bovine-meat production and show that ignoring this biological link can lead to substantial imbalances between national dietary guidelines and production outcomes and potentially lead to food waste. Furthermore, we assess current national dietary guidelines in Europe and find that most disregard this biological link and are incompatible with the PHD, with implications for policymakers and consumers to consider when adapting the PHD in national contexts.

Production-sharing of critical resources with dynamic demand under pandemic situation: The COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 virus's high transmissibility has resulted in the virus's rapid spread throughout the world, which has brought several repercussions, ranging from a lack of sanitary and medical products to the collapse of medical systems. Hence, governments attempt to re-plan the production of medical products and reallocate limited health resources to combat the pandemic. This paper addresses a multi-period production-inventory-sharing problem (PISP) to overcome such a circumstance, considering two consumable and reusable products. We introduce a new formulation to decide on production, inventory, delivery, and sharing quantities. The sharing will depend on net supply balance, allowable demand overload, unmet demand, and the reuse cycle of reusable products. Undeniably, the dynamic demand for products during pandemic situations must be reflected effectively in addressing the multi-period PISP. A bespoke compartmental susceptible-exposed-infectious-hospitalized-recovered-susceptible (SEIHRS) epidemiological model with a control policy is proposed, which also accounts for the influence of people's behavioral response as a result of the knowledge of adequate precautions. An accelerated Benders decomposition-based algorithm with tailored valid inequalities is offered to solve the model. Finally, we consider a realistic case study - the COVID-19 pandemic in France - to examine the computational proficiency of the decomposition method. The computational results reveal that the proposed decomposition method coupled with effective valid inequalities can solve large-sized test problems in a reasonable computational time and 9.88 times faster than the commercial Gurobi solver. Moreover, the sharing mechanism reduces the total cost of the system and the unmet demand on the average up to 32.98% and 20.96%, respectively.

Optimization of Production Decisions Under Resource Constraints and Community Priorities

The current paper proposes analytical solution of the problem of optimal allocation of resources in the game of two parties, based on the production function of Cobb-Douglas with constant returns under changing scale of production. The Edgeworth box is used to derive the main scientific findings of this research, namely: the analytic representation of Contract Curve; Community indifference curve, a production possibility frontier curve under Cobb-Douglas production function, analytical representation of the solution of maximization income in solving resource allocation problem. The proposed technique is more suitable for practical applicability compared with prevailing theoretical resource allocation models based on Cobb-Douglas production function.

Shared Fate and Entrepreneurial Collective Action in the U.S. Wood Pellet Market

Although studies underscore the importance of creating a coherent collective identity in order to legitimate a new market category, strategy and entrepreneurship research is divided on whether and to what degree an entrepreneur will engage in collective action to promote the identity. To reconcile the inconsistency, we introduce the concept of entrepreneurial shared fate—the belief of a focal venture that it and its competitors are bound together by a sense of belongingness and equally experience similar consequences—and explore how external threats can influence the degree of shared fate. We conceptually distinguish between communal and individual threats and propose that communal threats will increase, whereas individual threats will decrease, shared fate. We also explore boundary conditions that strengthen and weaken the main effects of perceived communal and individual threats on collective identity promotion. Empirically, we examine venture identity framing in response to forest-conservation activism in the U.S. wood pellet market. Implications for research on new market categories, collective identity, optimal distinctiveness, and forest management are discussed.

Raising the Bar: Values-Driven Niche Creation in U.S. Bean-to-Bar Chocolate

We examine how entrepreneurs might build a viable, values-driven niche. Extant templates for niche creation typically employed in moral markets depend on instrumentally rational logics that privilege economic ends such as profitability and efficiency. Entrepreneurs seeking to construct a nascent niche whose purpose and objectives include the amelioration of social ills, however, may find such templates inadequate. Using the emergence of the U.S. bean-to-bar chocolate niche, through which entrepreneurs attempt to address the social and environmental shortcomings of conventional chocolate production, we demonstrate that constructing an alternative model for niche creation is feasible. Most bean-to-bar entrepreneurs deliberately opted out of extant private regulation initiatives, developing instead alternative encompassing, values-driven sourcing and cooperative relationships, which we term collaborative governance. This is enacted throughout the niche by promoting shared values, best practices, and transparency and is supported by strategic meaning-making work to cultivate customers. Together, these three values-driven strategies form a novel template of niche creation based not on cognitive repositioning or exploiting exogenous change within existing structures and institutions, but on a reconceptualization of how markets might work to support the implementation of nonmarket goals. Based on our mixed-methods analysis, we find that, instead of hoping to accomplish nonmarket goals through established market structures, entrepreneurs built a niche centered on the achievement of specific social goals. Our findings suggest that to understand the strategies supporting emergent socially oriented markets, researchers must explore the intersections of values, entrepreneurial motivations, and operational complexities.

Speciation in Nascent Markets: Collective learning through cultural and material scaffolding

The construction of market infrastructure is a key component of market formation. In this article, we explore when and how this process leads to the fragmentation of a nascent market. We study the emergence of new markets in the context of social and impact investing in the United Kingdom during the period 1999 to 2019. We identify a recursive process of building the cultural and material infrastructure of the market, which we label cultural and material scaffolding, that drives collective learning by envisioning alternative futures and conducting institutional trials. We show how this scaffolding process explains the split between the social investment and the impact investment markets, which we theorize as market speciation. We identify two scope conditions under which we expect speciation to occur: field overlap and material anchoring. The paper contributes to the literature on market formation, and to the empirical understanding of how social and impact investment have emerged.

Shaping Markets Through Temporal, Constructive, and Interactive Agency

In this introductory essay, we develop a theoretical framework of agency as a basis for strategic shaping and market transformation. We conceive of agency as both constrained and enabled by structure, and we build on sociological views that treat market structures as pairings of cultural schemas and material resources that are mutually sustaining. Structures contain the seeds for change because contradictions and conflicts that are inherent to structure inspire agents to imagine a new order and provide pathways to enact them. We theorize three connected forms of agency. Constructive agency captures agents’ ability to differently apply schemas to mobilize resources and improve their strategic positions. Temporal agency underlies agents’ autonomy and individuation, and enables agents to envision new possibilities. Interactive agency captures the collective nature of agency, where interactions among heterogeneous actors provide opportunities for agents to persuade others of their changing conceptions and learn new schemas, expanding agents’ repertoires for shaping opportunities.

Don't adapt, shape! Use the crisis to shape your minimum viable system – And the wider market

In addition to being resilient and adaptive, firms should also utilize shocks such as COVID-19 to generate new business opportunities. Two processes make markets and other economic systems more malleable during times of crises: (1) as the stasis of the market system is interrupted, it forces the system “into movement” - and it requires less effort to nudge an already moving system in a specific direction; and (2) as deeply-rooted mental models are challenged during crises, any market-shaping initiative which promises a credible end to current instability with a new equilibrium will appeal to the natural human craving for stability. This malleability, in turn, creates multiple opportunities for firms to shape their markets and hence drive the market's development in favorable directions. We outline a generic process of market-shaping, comprising eight steps: (1) determining whether to act now or actively wait, (2) deciding whether to be a shaper or a supporter, (3) developing a scalable vision for the future market, (4) recognizing the minimum viable system linked to this vision, (5) driving changes in market-level properties, (6) securing that value is quantified and shared, (7) inviting actor engagement for implementation, and (8) defending against possible retaliations from threatened market systems.

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Strategic responses to external crises are not limited to resilience and adaptation.

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Crises make markets more malleable and allow proactive market-shaping strategies.

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Firms can adopt either a shaper or supporter role in market-shaping.

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Market-shaping requires firms to define and reconfigure their minimum viable system.