Does Good Personnel Management Practices give Agribusiness Firms a Competitive Advantage?

Agribusiness firms are often faced with the challenge of strategically managing employees to achieve a favorable position in the market (i.e. sustained competitive advantage). The resource based view (RBV) has been given considerable attention in the strategic management literature as a useful framework to analyze the significance of human resources in achieving sustained competitive advantage. However, there are few labor management studies in agribusiness that have used the RBV to provide evidence of a substantial relationship between any particular personnel management practice and competitive advantage. This paper provides an in-depth review of the RBV as a potential framework to analyze labor management practices in agribusiness. A case study is used to illustrate the application of this framework in the dairy industry and suggestions are made on how the framework can be extended and operationalized to guide future research and management practice in agribusinessHuman Resource Management, Resource-based View, Agribusiness, Sustained Competitive Advantage, Agribusiness,

Measuring Technical Efficiency of Dairy Farms with Imprecise Data: A Fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

This article integrates fuzzy set theory in Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) framework to compute technical efficiency scores when input and output data are imprecise. The underlying assumption in convectional DEA is that inputs and outputs data are measured with precision. However, production agriculture takes place in an uncertain environment and, in some situations, input and output data may be imprecise. We present an approach of measuring efficiency when data is known to lie within specified intervals and empirically illustrate this approach using a group of 34 dairy producers in Pennsylvania. Compared to the convectional DEA scores that are point estimates, the computed fuzzy efficiency scores allow the decision maker to trace the performance of a decision-making unit at different possibility levels.fuzzy set theory, Data Envelopment Analysis, membership function, α-cut level, technical efficiency, Farm Management, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Risk and Uncertainty, D24, Q12, C02, C44, C61,

Agricultural Productivity Growth in Africa: Is Efficiency Catching-up or Lagging Behind?

Recent empirical studies on agricultural productivity growth in African countries have produced mixed results; some find that uptake of new technology (technical progress) is the main source of total factor productivity growth while others point to improved use of existing technology (efficiency catch-up). This study tests for efficiency catch-up in the agricultural productivity of 33 African countries from 1966 to 2001. We use recent advances in data envelopment analysis (DEA) to generate standard and bootstrap bias corrected technical efficiency scores. In general, we find no evidence of efficiency catching-up. The standard DEA overestimated the efficiency scores of some countries due to small sample bias.Agriculture, Efficiency Catch-up, Bootstrap DEA, Africa, International Development, Production Economics,

Does Farm Size and Specialization Matter for Productive Efficiency? Results from Kansas

In this article, we used bootstrap data envelopment analysis techniques to examine technical and scale efficiency scores for a balanced panel of 564 farms in Kansas for the period 1993–2007. The production technology is estimated under three different assumptions of returns to scale and the results are compared. Technical and scale efficiency is disaggregated by farm size and specialization. Our results suggest that farms are both scale and technically inefficient. On average, technical efficiency has deteriorated over the sample period. Technical efficiency varies directly by farm size and the differences are significant. Differences across farm specializations are not significant.bootstrap, data envelopment analysis, efficiency, farms, Farm Management, Production Economics, D24, Q12,

LABOR PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH AND CONVERGENCE IN THE KANSAS FARM SECTOR: A TRIPARTITE DECOMPOSITION USING THE DEA APPROACH

The objective of this paper is to analyze sources of labor productivity growth in the Kansas farm sector over the period 1993-2006 for a sample of 668 farms. The nonparametric production frontier method is used to decompose labor productivity growth into three components: (1) technological catch-up, (2) technological change, and (3) capital deepening. Kernel estimation methods are used to analyze the evolution of the entire distribution of labor productivity in the sample period. We find that labor productivity is primarily driven by capital deepening. On average, capital deepening is the main source of convergence in productivity and technical change is a source of divergence. We find little evidence of technological catch-up. The impact of the three components of labor productivity varies by farm size.labor productivity, growth, technological catch-up, technological change, capital deepening, Labor and Human Capital,

Local Government Efficiency in Western Australia

The State government of Western Australia is currently working through a significant program of local government reform that has as a core objective a reduction in the number of local councils. The perception that there are economies of scale in service delivery is a key reason behind the State government’s desire to see a reduction in the number of councils in Western Australia. The following article uses the technique of Data Envelopment Analysis to measure the technical and scale efficiency of councils in Western Australia. The average pure technical efficiency score for Western Australian councils was found to be 83 per cent, and the average scale efficiency score was found to be 94 per cent. This suggests that pure scale effects are not a major source of inefficiency. Detailed returns to scale analysis for the 73 councils where complete data was available revealed that 17 councils were operating at the optimal scale, 26 were operating below the optimal scale, and 30 were operating above the optimal scale.Data Envelope Analysis, Local Government, Efficiency, Productivity Analysis,

Deregulation of the Australian Wheat Export Market: What Happened to Wheat Prices?

This paper investigates whether deregulation of the Australian wheat export market induced a structural change in the price data generation process. We examine the unit root properties of Western Australian wheat prices by testing for the possibility of single and double structural breaks in the price series. Daily prices for the period 20th of May 2003 to 14th of September 2010 are used. We find that the wheat price series has a unit root with two structural breaks but neither break coincided with the time when the Wheat Export Marketing Act 2008 came into effect on 1 July 2008. We conclude that change in local market behaviour would have started prior to actual deregulation with subsequent effect on local price.deregulation, unit root, structural breaks, wheat price, Agribusiness, Demand and Price Analysis, Marketing, Q13, Q18,

MANAGING HUMAN RESOURCES ON SIX DAIRY FARMS IN MICHIGAN: A RESOURCE-BASED PERSPECTIVE

How do dairy farms manage their human resources and how can the farms achieve competitive advantage through the human resource management (HRM) function? This inductive study of six dairy farms in Michigan explores those two questions using the resource-based theory (RBT) framework. Onsite interviews were conducted with 7 managers, 6 herdsmen and 7 non-supervisory employees. An interpretive research paradigm was used for both within case and between case analyses. Drawing insights from the RBT which postulates that valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable resources confer competitive advantage, results from this study indicate that dairy farms have the potential to achieve competitive advantage through their HRM function. While there are similar HRM practices across cases like recruiting and selection, the integration of specific HRM practices with the organizational culture (values of farm managers, relationships based on kinship and friendship ties) and resource endowment leads to different organizational outcomes (costly mistakes by employees, voluntary turnover and termination) Finally, based on propositions developed from this study and RBT literature, a conceptual framework is proposed to guide future research on how to empirically test the relationship between the HRM function and performance of farm enterprises to ascertain whether human resources are a potential source of sustained competitive advantage.Labor and Human Capital, Livestock Production/Industries,

RISK IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EXTENSION PROGRAMMING - RESULTS OF FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS WITH DAIRY AND GREEN INDUSTRY MANAGERS

Employees are both a source of risk and means of addressing risk, and good employee management practices can increase risk resilience. Forty green industry managers and 22 dairy managers discussed personnel issues related to their industry. Influx of Hispanic labor has changed personnel management and the focus of risk management.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Do Theoretical Restrictions Matter for the Translog Stochastic Production Function? Evidence from the Kansas Farm Sector

Farm Management, Production Economics, Productivity Analysis,