THE ECONOMIC ESSENCE OF MANAGEMENT IN FOOD INDUSTRY ENTERPRISES: AN INTEGRATED VALUE-CREATION, SUPPLY-CHAIN AND DIGITAL MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE

This study reconceptualises management in food industry enterprises as an integrated economic mechanism that transforms material, financial, human, technological and informational resources into sustainable value under conditions of perishability, seasonality, strict food-safety requirements and volatile demand. Rather than treating management as a purely administrative or functional process, the article develops a sector-specific interpretation that connects strategic management, operations, cost control, finance, supplychain coordination, quality assurance, marketing, innovation and digitalisation with enterprise-level economic outcomes. Methodologically, the research combines an integrative review of classical and contemporary management theory with a structured synthesis of recent peer-reviewed literature on food supply chains, sustainability, resilience and Industry 4.0, supplemented by descriptive evidence from official statistics of Uzbekistan. The findings show that the economic effectiveness of management in food manufacturing should be evaluated not only through profit and output, but also through raw-material yield, capacity utilisation, inventory turnover, cash-conversion efficiency, product returns, food loss and waste, energy and water intensity, and market performance. The article proposes an integrated management framework in which market demand and strategy are linked to resource planning, procurement, inventory, production, quality control, logistics, sales, financial outcomes and feedback. The originality of the study lies in integrating value-chain logic, the resource-based view, dynamic capabilities and digital information infrastructure into a unified sector-specific model for food industry enterprises, with particular relevance to emerging economies. The framework provides a foundation for future empirical testing and for developing composite indicators of management effectiveness in food manufacturing.