From the Short Supply Chain: New Conceptual Paradigm and Evidences

The network and chain concepts have been extensively used in the agribusiness organizations to explain the relations between agents (inter-firm relationships, resource bases, network governance instruments), to gain competitive advantage. In a neo-institutional framework, the network has been defined as a set of independent entities linked by horizontal interdependencies, which adopt common strategies and share the residual decision rights. The purpose of this study is to improve the performance of the short food supply chain (SFSCs) by optimizing the relations among the agents from production to consumption. For this purpose it used the Bak Sneppen algorithm able to solve the stochastic processes of the micro-chains coordination. It attempts to demonstrate that the short chain may evolve into a smart chain as the increasing geographic distance between producers and consumers does not cause significant increase in transaction costs due to loss in information or more difficulties in the coordination mechanism.