Business Model Transformation with Technology-Enabled Social Capital in Agriculture Domain

The recent advances in digital technologies have not yet reached the smallholder farming communities. Prevailing business models support farmers to trade mainly at informal markets where farmers receive significantly low prices. Research claims that building trustworthy buyer-seller relationships can promote farmers’ participation in emerging markets that provide rich opportunities for farmers. Thus, we propose a mechanism to enhance trust between farmers and buyers, demonstrating the transition of a spot market to sophisticated markets when facilitated in a blockchain platform. We present how micro-level trust can be evolved into macro-level trust and thereon to social capital (digital identity), leading to novel business models. We validate how micro-level trust can be established with a selection of a permissioned blockchain platform, Hyperledger Fabric, with an implementation of a spot market. The proposed business model is applicable in other industries where the seller-buyer relationship is the focal point

Green Activity Based Management (ABM) for Organisations

Green Activity Based Management (ABM) is a bottom-up approach for environmentally sustainable business process management. This approach extends Activity Based Costing (ABC) and Critical Path Method (CPM) principles for the purpose of capturing, measuring, modelling and reporting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The Green ABM not only looks at GHG emissions but also considers cost and time as well. Thus, this provides a holistic picture of these inter-dependent dimensions to the organizational manager for decision making. Furthermore, this research shows that Green ABM can be used to minimise the costs associated with the timing of activities while keeping other business objectives in consideration

Design for Empowerment: Empowering Sri Lankan Farmers through Mobile-based Information System

We developed a mobile-based information system (MBIS) to empower users to improve their livelihood activities. To do so, we first developed an empowerment framework (since one does not exist) as a basis to develop the MBIS. In particular, we conducted this research to solve an agriculture over-production problem in Sri Lanka where farmers remain trapped in a poverty cycle. They cannot make informed decisions due to lack of access to timely, context-based actionable information to achieve a good revenue. We had to generate some essential information such as current production level in real-time by capturing farmers’ decisions such as what and how much to grow. For this purpose, we needed to empower farmers to actively engage them in informed decision-making process through the MBIS. In evaluating the impact of the MBIS, we found a statistically significant positive change in farmers’ empowerment levels based on measuring self-efficacy, sense of control, and motivation before and after they used the application. Commercial organizations have since adopted this mobile-based system in India and Sri Lanka to solve agricultural problems, in universities Africa to mitigate hidden hunger, and the Corporative Research Center in Australia to develop digital health applications to manage chronic diseases, which indicates the approach’s wide adoptability

A Framework for Multi-dimensional Business Process Optimization for GHG Emission Mitigation

Anthropogenic climate change is shaping up to be a major global challenge in its potential impacts to humanity. A major contributor to this is Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from various sources, including industrial or organizational sector. Some organizational managers realizing the inevitability of government legislations or taxes want to take proactive measures to manage their own GHG emissions. The current emission measuring tools and guidelines are not aimed at measuring emissions of organisational processes. Hence these guidelines and tools do not allow emissions to be handled in a pragmatic manner alongside other business objectives such as cost, turnaround time and quality of production. Therefore, we propose a framework for multi-dimensional business process optimisation that would facilitate modelling, measuring, analysing and reporting GHG emissions. This framework, derived from the GHG Protocol, enables organizational management to optimize their business processes for GHG emission mitigation, alongside other vital business objectives

Achieving Agriculture Biotic Sustainability through Mobile-based Information System: Adapting the characteristics of Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

Agriculture is the foundation of the economy in Sri Lanka. Presently, many factors affect agriculture production leading to crop losses and food waste in Sri Lanka. An in-depth study of these factors exposed that the root causes were the improper agricultural practices followed by the farmers and inaccessibility to the required information at the right time for optimal decision-making. As a solution, earlier, a mobile-based application called Govi Nena was developed for farmers in Sri Lanka. In this work, we have extended the earlier version of the application to suit the different needs of farmers. This extension includes delivering the required information similar to how the information is delivered in GIS and a new module for farmers to manage real-time pest/disease incidences. Finally, the prototyped version of the application was tested among several farmers in Sri Lanka to understand the suitability of the work concerning farmers\u27 requirements

Structural and Behavioural Model for Social Computing Applications

Social Computing a new paradigm is causing transformational changes to societal and business processes resulting in new businesses models known as sharing economy, peer economy or collaborative consumption. The diffusion rates of these applications have surpassed any historical technological advancement and have reached millions and billions of users during a short period of time. To understand this phenomenon we analysed eight such popular applications using inductive and content analysis techniques which have helped us derive a structural and a behavioural model for Social Computing. Using these two models we were able to get a deeper understanding of how an application designed to assist a particular communication pattern give rise to a set of emergent characteristics within the user such as trust, empowerment, belongingness that motivate user to act to fulfil a need assisting the growth of these applications. This understanding can guide the design of new successful Social Computing applications

SMEs gaining competitive advantage through eCollaboration

Collaboration can be enabled by the use of web technologies. This paper outlines a project established to investigate possible strategies that could be adopted by Australian toolmakers to allow them to be more competitive in the global market. Results show progress in eTransforming their organizations and steady movement towards eCollaboration. It is suggested that trust is a crucial underlying aspect of successful collaboration. Future studies include the expansion of the framework and strategies to other Australian toolmakers

Towards An Agriculture Information Ecosystem

Stakeholders of a domain in their day today activities generate information which is a valuable resource. To obtain full value of this information it should reach right people at the right time. To investigate how this can be achieved we developed an information flow model for agriculture domain by mapping information needed by stakeholders to information generated by others using set of aggregation and disaggregation operators. We found majority of information needs of stakeholders can be fulfilled by applying these operators to information produced by some other stakeholders thus creating a direct benefit to encourage sharing information. This information flow model had many similarities to biological ecosystems where nutrient cycles and energy flows are replaced by information flows. Based on this information ecosystem model we are developing a mobile based information system for farmers in Sri Lanka. Like biological ecosystems information ecosystems will also need time to grow and become sustainable

Sustainable microfinance outreach for farmers with blockchain cryptocurrency and smart contracts

In the process of cultivation, from the point of deciding to plant a certain crop to the point of selling harvest to the market, farmers incur many expenses at different stages of the crop life cycle. 75% of smallholder farmers around the world includes the world’s poorest. Most of them face constraints in getting finance to cover such costs. Microfinance, a method of offering small loans to the marginal, has evolved as a major institutional source to provide financial facilities to such people. Although there is ample evidence showing that microfinance has a positive impact on economic activities, securing the livelihood of the marginal people by uplifting their economic status, it can be a dilemma at the same time, since the severe indebtedness caused by microfinance loans has led impoverished communities to economic, social, and environmental vulnerabilities. In this paper, we present a blockchain-based conceptual model for sustainable microfinance outreach for farmers where the microfinance institutes can dynamically adjust the loans they provide according to the farmer’s actions resulting in a reduction in severe indebtedness and vulnerabilities while smoothing the crop cultivation process leading to better farm outputs and income