Exploring integrative collaborative governance in SME-based agri-food supply chains: mixed-methods insights from Indonesia

Abstract

Sustainability challenges in agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) are particularly pronounced in emerging economies, where small- and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) dominate production yet operate within fragmented, institutionally plural, and power-imbalanced coordination environments. Prevailing approaches—ranging from firm-centric compliance regimes to technosolutionist digitalisation narratives—offer limited explanatory value in such contexts, as they often abstract sustainability from governance dynamics and political–economic conditions. This study advances an integrative collaborative governance perspective to examine how sustainability emerges not from isolated technical or organisational interventions, but from the interaction among relational governance, institutional facilitation, coordination processes, and technological enablers. Adopting a pragmatist mixed-methods design, the study combines survey data from 120 SME actors with 32 semi-structured interviews conducted across peri-urban agri-food clusters in East Java, Indonesia. The findings indicate that sustainability outcomes—economic, social, and environmental—are collective, emergent, and politically mediated, rather than the direct result of any single governance mechanism. Relational trust provides a necessary social foundation for cooperation; however, in the absence of institutional mediation and structured coordination, trust often stabilises asymmetrical dependencies rather than enabling transformative outcomes. Coordination processes emerge as the operational mechanism through which governance integration becomes actionable, while digital technologies function not as autonomous drivers of sustainability, but as governance amplifiers, reinforcing either inclusive collaboration or exclusionary practices depending on how data access, accountability, and decision-making authority are governed. By foregrounding interaction, power, and context, this study contributes to a Southern epistemology of sustainability governance that challenges depoliticised and technology-centric models of agri-food transformation. The findings offer actionable insights for policymakers and practitioners seeking to design inclusive, resilient, and contextually grounded AFSC governance arrangements in the Global South.