Ihnatko M. Management mechanisms for supporting innovative agro-industrial production in Ukraine

The thesis seeks to provide a comprehensive theoretical and methodological study as well as to conduct applied research to enhance the management mechanisms for supporting innovative agro-industrial production in Ukraine. The study also provides a generalized summary on the current classifications of innovations and agroinnovations along with contributing to better understanding of agroindustry innovation process by identifying specific steps in its structure and thus complementing the modern innovation process paradigm. Based on the in-depth study of the current state and the dynamics of the agro-industrial production in Ukraine. The study provides a comprehensive assessment of the agricultural industry innovation performance in Ukraine along with identifying particular negative trends which refer in the first instance to the lack of innovation-driven activities in agribusiness and a drop in institutions engaged in R&D, as well as offers the evaluation results on the innovation rate of the leading Ukrainian agricultural enterprises and discusses the opportunities and benefits of the domestic automation systems to foster agribusiness optimization. Further, the organizational, legal, economic, social and marketing sub-mechanisms in the overall management toolkit framework to enhance the innovative development of agro-industrial production have been identified. The PEST-analysis of the factors affecting the innovative development of agro-industrial production in Ukraine has been performed which enabled to reveal another critical impact factor embedded in the agriculture specifics that can contribute to the analysis quality, i. e. the En (environmental) – (environmental) effects. Apart from the above, the following structural elements contributing to agribusiness innovation development have been evaluated: human resources, information, research and procurement potentials along with designing an organizational and managerial support framework to facilitate innovation-based processes in the agricultural sector. In addition, the study suggests a range of innovation strategies and identifies specific areas to encourage agro-industrial innovations in Ukraine. Within the scope of the research, an upgraded innovation infrastructure for the agro-industrial sector has been suggested by designing a model of an innovation park in the form of a government-led cross-sector partnership of agribusiness, IT industry and research institutions as well as unfolding the benefits of such synergy for all the participants of such innovation park. Based on taxonomic analysis, a multifactor regression model of innovative development of agro-industrial production in Ukraine has been constructed. According to the calculations performed, it is verified that social and economic factors have the greatest effects on innovative development of the agro-industrial sector. The study identifies strategic goals of the innovative development of agro-industrial production in Ukraine. Insights are provided on the specifics of innovation development models in selected countries (such as USA, EU, Japan, South Korea, Chile, and China) along with exploring the international best practices in managing innovations in agribusiness. The author suggests the areas for the harmonization of international management mechanisms to support agroinnovations with the Ukrainian settings. It is argued that in the context of improving the system of sub-mechanisms within the organizational and economic framework of the integrated management mechanism to support innovative development of agro-industrial production, social and marketing perspectives should be identified as the primary ones, by their critical significance.