NAVIGATING THROUGH RISK AND UNCERTAINTY: Coordination as a management response to a global plant disease in the Philippine banana sector

Summary

This dissertation looks at coordination as a management response to a global plant disease disrupting banana production systems in southern Philippines. The study offers a contextualised and multi-dimensional understanding of collaborative efforts to address, handle or temper the disease. The findings signify that specific biological and material properties of the disruption, a plant disease, are intrinsically coupled with social, political, and organizational drivers of collaborative actions. This highlights the importance of joint capacities to recognise the emergence, spread and magnitude of risks as a pre-condition for shaping interactions and spaces for concerted action. Empirical chapters investigate how sector, corporate and community actors navigate the complexities of this global disturbance, which refashions intricacies of coordination mechanisms embedded in the modes of global supply chain governance in different socio-economic and geographical settings. This interdisciplinary research shifts attention from a pure solution-based approach to a collaborative community navigating risk and uncertainty.