To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, research concepts and empirical evidence are needed to upgrade smallholder activities within local value chains (LVCs) of many developing countries. Yet, comprehensive gender-sensitive investigations of the evolution and multiplicity of governance in whole food systems with parallel functioning of local and modern value chains (MVCs) are greatly underrepresented in the scientific literature. This study aims to uncover LVCs' (a) value systems, (b) governance themes and gender roles for value addition and (c) smallholder upgrading strategies in developing countries' dualistic sectors. The global value chain framework serves as the conceptual basis for the study and is extended towards the gendered value web approach. Empirical data obtained through three focus group discussions, three Net-maps and 21 interviews from the Nigerian shrimp sub-sector represent the basis for the qualitative analysis. The results identified two lead actors-traders and women processors-who are crucial for the functioning of the complex value system. Further findings showed that fishermen and women processors are mutually reliant and are organized along their gendered comparative advantage. Based on these results, manifold managerial and policy implications, that are also applicable to other developing countries and cases, are derived to upgrade and develop smallholders' gendered activities and products along the LVC.gender, global value chain framework, governance themes, Nigerian fishing sector, smallholder upgrading strategies, value web approach | INTRODUCTIONThe last decade has witnessed huge transformations in the food value chains of developing countries, such as rapidly increasing globalization, regionalization, modernization and technologization. These transformations are often associated with distributional effects that counteract the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Dürr, 2015;WTO, 2019). Smallholders respond to these changing situations by switching their marketing channels or interorganizational relationships (Lie, Rich, Kurwijila, & Jervell, 2012;Schipmann & Qaim, 2010). This intensifies the formation of dualistic systems in which both local value chains (LVCs) and modern value chains (MVCs) coexist. Differentiating by actors' size, level of formalization and target markets (Dürr, 2015), LVC is defined, in this study,

It is widely recognized that participation in producer groups is advantageous for smallholders who must deal with complex production and marketing constraints and dynamic business environments. However, available data on this process are scarce in the fishery sector, while existing evidence is limited by smallholders’ potential self-selection into producer groups. This study, therefore, examined the selectivity-corrected role of fisher groups in improving shrimpers’ technological and technical efficiency. Using the latest primary data from artisan shrimpers in Nigeria, we applied propensity score matching and Greene’s selectivity stochastic production frontier model to control for selection bias from both observable and unobservable factors. Empirical results from our metafrontier approach show that technical efficiency scores for members tend to be overestimated if selectivity is not properly controlled. However, the technical efficiencies and productivities of members were significantly higher regardless of how biases were corrected, implying that participation in fisher groups is positively related to increases in shrimpers’ capture and technical efficiency. Further findings suggest that current artisanal fisher groups are “production-oriented” as they ensure that members access vital shrimping inputs at lower costs. With declining returns to scale for members, the study concludes that without public and private support for collective action in the fishery sector, membership in artisanal fisher groups may not lead to significant improvement in shrimpers’ productivity. The study discusses several recommendations on how collective action can be further encouraged and developed among artisan fishers.

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The increased use of social media resulted in active participation of women on social media platforms, specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, very little research has been carried out, specifically, on how women cope with the challenges of unemployment using social media networks. Thus, many women resort to different means as a coping strategy during their unemployment. In the face of rapid diffusion of social platforms, it is unclear how women personality traits influence their use of the social media. Similarly, it is also unclear how women's experiences with these social networks, as a medium of online social support, serve as a coping strategy in the period of unemployment from the perspective of an emerging market. A quantitative research was employed. Hence, a questionnaire was used as its research instrument. Women Facebook users are contacted to fill the questionnaire between May and July 2019. There were 1473 respondents. Their responses were utilized with SPSS for regression analysis, mediation analysis and moderation analysis. This finding shows that educational achievement is a crucial factor in the ability of unemployed females to leverage online social support for employment. This study touched on the limitation of the previous works and areas for future study.

Purpose Much has been written on the effect of fast-moving business environments on organizational and supply chain (SC) management. Yet, empirical findings on the effect of changing external and internal contingencies on today’s globalized agrifood SC networks and performance are still fragmented into different organizational instruments, with some conflicting results remaining unexplained. This study aims to address these deficiencies by providing a comprehensive research framework to investigate how SC external and internal contingencies jointly influence organizational SC network structures and agrifood performance across mutually dependent tiers. Design/methodology/approach Using partial least squares structural equation modeling, the so-called “contingency–netchain–performance” framework, based on contingent resource-based theory and the netchain approach, was empirically tested on data obtained from a standardized survey of 405 artisanal producers and 238 processors in the Nigerian shrimp sector. Findings The results provide statistical evidence that supports the path dependency of firm performance from the interplay of vertical, horizontal and lateral relationships and, primordially, from both external and internal contingencies. The findings show that the contingency paradigm of fit among small-scale food producers and processors cuts across tiers and uncover a tendency to adopt relational governance and tighter network structures that result in an organic organization as the best-fitting structure. Originality/value The paper presents a new research framework that offers comprehensive empirical explanations for the joint influence of SC external and internal contingencies on organizational SC network structures and performance across mutually dependent agrifood tiers. This study’s conceptual, practical and policy implications for SC management provide a nascent and flexible basis on which to identify the best-fitting organizational strategies that maximize firm performance across agrifood SC tiers characterized by changing business environments.