Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the key risk components (probability and consequence) and their respective thresholds affecting agri-food supply chain operations in Ghana. In addition, it seeks to understand the relationship between the major risk sources and to fathom the risk/disruption impact on agri-food supply chain performance in Ghana.Design/methodology/approach: Cross-sectional survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire. The risks threshold associated with agri-food supply chain were categorized using the risk matrix scale and classification described in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (Project Management Institute, 2013). Next, the Pearson correlation was used to understand the relationship between the various risks and agri-food chain performance. Lastly, to investigate how firms’ supply chain operations have been affected by risks/disruptions, an ordinary least square regression model was employed to quantify the impact of some major risk sources on agri-food chain performance in Ghana.Findings: The results in this paper show variations in risks’ probability, impact and threshold in agri-food supply chain. While risk sources such as periodic change in interest/exchange rate policies and volatility in customer demand are high-rated risks, uncertain land policies/tenure and poor quality control are low rated risks in the operations of the chain. The performance of the agri-food chain significantly but negatively correlates with all the major risks studied. Whereas demand, supply, weather, logistics/infrastructure and financial risk sources significantly undermined the chain’s performance, risks emerging from biological/environmental, management/operational, policy/regulations and political-related issues insignificantly affect the performance of agri-food supply chain in Ghana.Research limitations/implications: This research is an area biased. However, some insightful managerial implications can be drawn from this paper to manage agri-food chain operations in a similar unstable environment. The result implies that risks are inevitable in agri-food chain but they differ in terms of menace to the chain’s operation. Therefore, to manage agri-food supply chain risks effectively, managers should periodically identify, quantify and categorize risk sources before making risk response decisions. In addition, the results show that risks account for about half of the overall agri-food chain performance in Ghana. This infers that managers/practitioners could improve the performance of the agri-food chain if limited resources are allocated to plan and effectively respond to major risks sources (such as demand, supply, finance, weather and logistical/ infrastructural services-related risks) undermining the performance of the chain.Originality/value: This research contributes to the agri-food chain risk literature and provides managers/practitioners with empirical evidence of risk thresholds and their corresponding major impact on agri-food chain’s performance. Since risks explained about half of agri-food chain performance in Ghana, this research would prompt decision makers to improve on their risk assessment and responds (e.g. by employing efficient demand, supply and weather forecasting systems, logistic/infrastructure services, hedge to finance, etc.) to improve the chain’s performance.

In market economies, intermediaries help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by providing them with valuable resources and information to facilitate their capacity building and innovation. The various roles of intermediaries have been analysed, yet the mechanism of their contribution to SMEs' growth is not clear in the current literature. This article attempts to analyse how intermediaries contribute to SMEs' innovation performance. Two types of cooperation with intermediaries are identified: information-based and resource-based. A theoretical framework of organizational learning is proposed to understand the impact of cooperation with intermediaries. An empirical study of SMEs in the Yangtze River Delta was conducted. The results showed that resource-based cooperation helps to improve innovation performance through both exploratory learning and exploitative learning, whereas information-based cooperation helps to improve innovation performance through exploratory learning.

This study focused on crowdfunded ventures in the reward-based model and explored the relevance of their essential campaign and project implementation performance outcomes on the second round of resource acquisition. This research considered funding from accredited and unaccredited investors, additional crowd capital, and other forms of resources from other business investors. Results from sampled crowdfunded ventures on the Kickstarter and projects official websites revealed that the determinants of first round crowdfunding project campaign traction, reward delivery scheduled date, campaign duration, and reward delivery performance outcomes predict the second round of resource acquisition. Furthermore, the results suggest that project creators’ crowdfunding risk awareness is a relevant determinant of reward delivery performance outcome and access to the second round of resource. The findings are significant for the decision-making of entrepreneurs, investors, and crowdfunding platforms, as these parties benefit from the informational value of campaign and project implementation performance outcomes.