Drivers of successful transitions to new activities by farmers

Farmers and horticulturalists need to change their production methods to achieve a more sustainable agricultural production system. The goal of this project is to understand which farmers successfully adapt their product and/ or production methods. This project diverts from adoption and transition models that are common in agricultural literature and explores and contributes to the growing body of literature on entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurial Proclivity and the Performance of Farms: The Cases of Dutch and Slovenian Farmers

Farms are advised to be entrepreneurial, but empirical research showing that an entrepreneurial proclivity (EP) of farmers results in better performance is scant. This research will test empirically whether an EP contributes to the performance of farms. We provide a model with hypotheses about the relationship between EP and performance, which is tested for a sample of Dutch and Slovenian farmers. We find that EP has a universal positive influence on performance and performance expectations of farmers in The Netherlands and in Slovenia. The influence of the underlying dimension of EP, i.e. innovativeness, proactiveness and risk taking, on performance are mixed and context specific.Entrepreneurship, innovativeness, proactiveness, Productivity Analysis,

Marketing Cooperatives' Re-engineering: Influences among Organizational Attributes, Strategic Attributes & Performance

ABSTRACT In this paper we expand the agribusiness co-op literature by studying the re-engineering process of marketing cooperatives (co-ops). More specifically we discuss and empirically examine organizational innovations adopted by marketing co-ops in Greece. We hypothesize three types of relationships: a) the influence of organizational (i.e., collective ownership, control and cost/benefit allocation) and strategic (i.e., market and brand orientation) attributes on organizational performance; b) the influence of organizational attributes on market orientation; and c) influences among strategic attributes. Data for this study were collected from a largescale survey with CEOs of marketing co-op in Greece. The results show that strategic attributes have a much greater influence on organizational performance than organizational attributes have, as only a few among the examined elements of re-engineered attributes have a (marginal) positive influence on performance. This result raises the question whether the influence of the re-engineered structures on performance has been over-emphasized in the co-op literature. Moreover, the results demonstrate positive influences among the strategic attributes of co-ops, contrary to the non-significant results of organizational attributes on market orientation. This may imply that organizational attributes do not seem to act as drivers or barriers to the adoption of strategic attributes, and, hence, reinforces the conclusion that emphasis in co-op theory and practice should also be also placed on the strategies and tactics that co-ops should adopt and implement in order to capture market benefits. Keywords: marketing cooperatives, attributes, organizational, strategic, performance, Greec