The Role of Institutional Investors in the Evolutionary Dynamics of Agro-food Enterprises

The research topic is the one of public finance company whose core business is focused to support investment projects to overcome enterprises technological and structural gap. The research question is: If and how a public finance company is able to create and favor value creation processes sustainability for agro-food enterprises, highlighting the positive emerging externalities for different categories of stakeholders. They have results with particular evidences allow comparisons between the private investments and the support of institutional public investors. In such perspective, the mode of disbursement of soft loans and investment operations made by a public financing company will be examined. The methodological approach used, following a deductive-inductive perspective, is based on the case study. Such technique able to formulate theories about a little known phenomena in their context, allows the study of recent events on which the researcher has little control. To this, a qualitative analysis on both primary and secondary data adds. From data analysis, it resulted that the Institute of Agribusiness Development (ISA) initiatives facilitated, just for example, the technological innovation of production department and consequent production capacity, the acquisition of production assets for row material processing and optimization of internal logistics, through an innovative automated warehouse. As a result, the case study finds sustainability at multiple levels reached by the activities promoted by ISA and the subsequent co-creation of value for stakeholders involved, small agro-food businesses innovation, and/or internationalization processes. As long as practical implications are concerned, such highlight the importance and the need for public and private institutions in their effort to continue to invest in projects to support the economy of the country. The originality of the paper lies in the proposed interpretation of more integrative paradigms (viable system approach, sustainability, and, value creation), analyzing a financial institution for the development of the Italian food industry. At the same time, authors stress the research limit that is the analysis of the input of only one organization and consequent limited data in quantity and time span.