Conceptualizing the Role of the Financial Industry in Sustainability Transitions in Agriculture

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the way that the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) can be used to understand the role of financial business services in sustainable transitions in agriculture. In doing so this thesis answered the following questions: How could the Multi-Level Perspective be used to understand the role of financial business services in sustainability transitions in agriculture? What questions may this be useful in answering? Firstly, by taking a structured approach to testing a novel approach to the MLP that can potentially contend with prior critiques to the MLP. This novel conceptual framework was constructed employing literature adjacent to the MLP to advance understandings of the way that the FBS industry affects sustainable socio-technical transitions in agronomy. Secondly, this thesis answered the focusing questions by testing the conceptual framework by operationalizing a conceptual model based on the causation theory of critical realism. This highlighted strengths and weaknesses of the framework. This then informed what questions that the current state of this novel MLP framework can be useful in answering (given sufficient information), and what changes might need to be made to improve it. This operationalization was fruitful, insofar as it tested the theoretical framework and produced some insights into the phenomena of interest in the Swedish context. It also provided insights into what data and reconceptualization’s would improve the framework going forward. Notable strengths being: Breaking down general differences in business model components between the business models of identified niche and regime firms allows for an understanding of how intra-firm dynamics factor into multi-level and multi-regime conceptions of sustainable socio-technical transitions in agronomy. Relational proximities were useful for conceptualizing how multi-level dynamics materialize through networks of diverse actors, with different interests, embedded in different spatial contexts. The contract was found to be a particularly useful as information on the potential contracts, and why they might differ in reaction to different farms was able to be found via desk research and correspondences. Lastly, the critical realist model of causation proved an invaluable way of structuring the complicated theoretical framework. The most notable weaknesses were that: The conceptual model is blind to the spectrum of farms with different shares of organic and conventional agronomy that the operationalization of the model does not factor in multi-level dynamics within the FBS regime, that the model does not account for the role of cropping in the broader business model of a farm, and that there are notable gaps in data regarding the actual models and financial structures of farms in Sweden. Also, limited understandings were developed regarding actual spatial dynamics and outcomes regarding the development of more sustainable business models in agronomy.