TRANSPARENCY IN NETCHAINS

The paper defines transparency in agri chains and networks and discusses its preconditions, effects and institutional embedding. International aspects receive special attention. Because the food and agribusiness sector have such obvious links to public health, improving transparency in them is particularly important. The international context is imperative because most of the food we buy in our shops crosses national borders during its production. After pleading that a multidisciplinary approach is needed the paper suggests three levels of transparency: history transparency (e.g. tracking and tracing), operations transparency (e.g. collaborative logistics planning) and strategy transparency (e.g. joint innovation). While the first of these has a defensive connotation, the latter could be logical next steps. 1. Chain and Network Studies Chain and Network Studies has been posited as a new interdiscipline (Beers et al. 1998, Diederen and Jonkers 2001). For the sake of brevity we shall speak of Netchain Studies in this paper. Its mother disciplines are of three streams: ‘s’, in casu technology; information systems, and ‘?’ or social sciences, in casu organization studies, economics and law. The interdiscipline is at the cutting edge of s and ?, with information systems as the linking pin. Information Systems itself is in fact an interdiscipline of s and ?. The reason for mentioning it is its special importance to Netchain Studies. The formation of netchains asks for exchange not only of goods and money ‐ which happen in any transaction ‐ but also of information. Information constitutes the lifeblood of the netchain. History has shown that it takes many years for new technologies to become agents of social and institutional change. The telephone, the car, and the Internet are cases in point. It can be expected that netchains will also take many years to reach their full impact on business and society. Currently there are still many barriers to netchain integration, and the tension between the tendency to hide and the need to provide your company data is central to many of them. Another potential problem is that chain integration can conflict with antitrust law, notably in the USA. Netchain integration offers huge opportunities for better serving the needs of customers and society. ? sciences can investigate these. They can help, for instance, to understand the behaviour of consumers and other stakeholders; to constrain developments such as market monopolisation; to understand co -operation versus defection; to align practices in different countries; to set the research agenda for the s sciences and analyse the societal impacts of new technologies. Netchain integration offers a new, widened context for technological innovations to be investigated by s sciences. One among many other functions for s sciences is to enable collection of data that occur in one part of a netchain and are needed in other parts. The formation of netchains also constitutes threats to customers and society: any largescale system can cause large-scale damage when it breaks down, and large international netchains have in the past caused international food scares and will no doubt do so in the future. Information systems are crucial to contain these risks. ? sciences are crucial to understanding how stakeholders in various parts of the world perceive them and respond to