Countries still confronted with transition process express different patterns of contractual arrangements in the agricultural sector. The inefficiencies in their legal systems and problems with contracts enforcement in many instances force informal contracting arrangements instead. This paper...

Social capital is one of the most crucial factors determining the effectiveness of operations in a cooperative organisation. When membership of a cooperative decreases, the financial capital also decreases. An important asset of cooperatives is the commitment and loyalty of their members....

Based on a survey on farmers in Finland, this study examined the extent to which farmer co-operatives enjoy social capital within their memberships as they become internationalised. Findings from limited dependent variable regressions suggest that one group of farmers is loyal to the...

In 2007-2008, when food prices started to increase dramatically, purchasing power parity of consumers started to decrease automatically. High food prices were argued to cause poverty, hunger, and food riots among urban populations. Henceforward, ‘food crisis’ became a new story line on the...

In the Czech Republic, agricultural production is still dominated by corporate farms. However, not all of them had been equally successful, economically. In general, a varying adoption of production factors is identified as being of influence. Whether their ability to collaborate with other...

Agri-environmental schemes are the main policy instrument currently available in the EU to promote environmentally friendly farming practices. Nevertheless, the adoption rate of these measures is still limited. This paper develops a theoretical framework to explain farmer sign-up decision and...

This article deals with the issue of entry into an industry where firms share a collective reputation. First, we show that free entry is not socially optimal; there is a need for regulation through the imposition of a minimum quality standard. Second, we argue that a minimum quality standard can...

The paper stresses that in order to understand the current re-organizational processes in the food system, two kinds of social capital should be taken into account, trust and network-based social capital. Stemming from a case study, concerning the Italian processing tomato industry, it...

Trust is modelled as either enforceable or intrinsic. Antecedents of trust in history, human nature, personality and culture are analyzed. The implications of these for the dynamics of trust in business-to-business networks of organizations are discussed. Finally an agenda for empirical research...

This paper develops a due diligence for electronic transactions with new partners in business networks with complex goods such as food products to enable the use of e-commerce potentials in first time transactions. The e-commerce due diligence is a means to reduce perceived risks and...