FEATURES OF THE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS IN AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT IN THE CONDITION OF RUSSIAN MILITARY AGGRESSION IN UKRAINE

Abstract

Full-scale Russian military aggression in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, significantly affected the conditions for conducting domestic business and agribusiness in particular. This article presents the results of a study of how the conditions of war affected the process of making managerial decisions at the level of domestic agribusiness enterprises. The main objective of the article is to study the features of making managerial decisions in wartime. Methods includes the combinations of primary research, including interviews with agribusiness managers and industry experts, with secondary research, such as industry reports, case studies, and academic literature. Also, the use of methods of justification of decisions under probabilistic certainty and uncertainty of conditions for the implementation of alternatives by using payment matrix. By incorporating these perspectives, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the decision-making process in Ukrainian agribusiness in wartime. Results of the survey showed the impact of war as an external environmental factor on decision-making by agribusiness enterprises in the areas of production technologies, conservation of production resources, changes in the direction of resource procurement and sales of manufactured products. The main factors that affected the agricultural sector are identified, including a reduction in sown areas, damage to buildings and equipment, rising prices for fertilizers and diesel fuel, labor shortages, blockade of Black Sea ports, and lack of electricity. The influence of the basic resources of an agribusiness enterprise (land, capital, labor, enterprise and information) on the formation of its profit is shown. On the example of the crop sector of agricultural enterprises, the main directions of increasing the productivity of agricultural land use in the war and post-war periods are indicated, where the main ones are: increasing the level of specialization of production in accordance with the conditions of the economy; increasing the productivity of the use of enterprise assets by introducing modern innovative technologies for the production of agricultural products; expanding irrigation. Practical implications. On the example of a dairy processing enterprise, the processes of making management decisions regarding the selection of effective products for sale on the market are demonstrated. For this purpose, the method of payment matrix with probabilistic certainty of the implementation conditions was used and the choice of the best alternative was justified. Since the conditions for the implementation of alternatives are also antipodes (alternatives), in reality there will be only one option for implementing the alternative from among those presented in the matrix. Therefore, in addition to the size of the expected result (profit), the final choice of the best alternative by the manager is significantly influenced by other factors, in particular: the presence of negative consequences of the alternative; probability of conditions with negative consequences; difference in consequences of implementing alternatives (scale of fluctuations); difference in expected consequences of implementing alternatives, etc. Value / originality is the proposed approaches to the development of management decisions by managers of agricultural and processing enterprises in conditions of uncertainty caused by the war.