Against Food Waste: CSR for the Social and Environmental Impact through a Network-Based Organizational Model

Abstract

This article inductively develops a model of how farmers market organizations can contribute to reduce food waste, fight poverty, and improve public health through innovative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices enabled by networked activity systems. To this aim, a ten-year longitudinal case study of one of the biggest Italian farmers markets has been conducted, based on triangulated data from participant observation, interviews, and internal documents collection. This study suggests that farmers market organizations are in the position to leverage their inter-organizational relationships, institutional role, and power to build collaborative networks with businesses, government bodies, and charities, so that concrete CSR-based virtuous circles on surplus food donation are triggered at the organizational field level. Answering the call from United Nation Goals for successful examples on SDG 12, this case presents how several CSR levers can have a social and environmental impact allowing farmers and their market organizations to increase their efficiency and accountability to the local community, improve processes, reduce food waste, and contribute to public health and social inclusion. CSR actions have co-evolved with significant changes in organizational logics and identity, thus enabling accountability to the local community and innovative network-level auditing of the relevant organizational processes.