Creating and Maintaining Global Connections: Agro-business and the Precarious Making of Fresh-cut Markets

This article reconstructs the evolution of a multinational fruit processing company from Ghana. Starting from the perspective that firms more generally aim at achieving stability in intra- and extra-organisational relations, the article explores the practical means (organisational forms, resources, technologies, strategies and routines) through which the case study company achieved relational stability in global markets, but also shows how this was eroded in changing market environments. Extending out from this case study, the article also addresses the questions why some agro-business firms in Africa have developed more sophisticated high-value market connections while others have not and whether foreign direct investments can serve as catalysts for agro-industrialisation.