“The role of institutional investors in the evolutionary dynamics of agro-food enterprises. A case study”

The paper purpose is to analyze the role of a public finance company in terms of value creation processes sustainability for agro-food enterprises, highlighting the positive emerging externalities for different categories of stakeholders. In particular, the paper aims to stress the relevance of a public finance company whose core business is focused to support investment projects to overcome enterprises technological and structural gap. Evidences result which 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. Following a deductive-inductive perspective, the methodological approach is based on the case study (Yin, 1994; Dubois and Gadde, 2002). 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 (Myers, 2013) on both primary and secondary data adds. 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. 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, value creation), analyzing a financial institution for the development of the Italian food industry.