ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITY, VALUE EVOLUTION, AND ORGANIZATIONAL INTEGRATION OF PROFESSIONAL FARMER ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A MULTI-CASE COMPARISON IN CHINA

Highlights

● The choice of a modern agriculture project was found to be rational for professional farmers to reduce interference from non-market factors. The success of this project is due to its capacity to successfully fill the structural hole in the market transaction network.

● Professional farmers were shown to start their businesses by occupying the ‘self-benefit’ or ‘mutual-benefit’ structural hole of the market transaction network in economically developed areas.

● Professional farmers were found to occupy the organizational-governance structural hole of the rural social relationship network and the ‘mutual-benefit’ structural hole of the market network to start their businesses in traditional agricultural areas.

Abstract

A comparative multi-case analysis of professional farmer entrepreneurship cases in China was performed by applying the structural hole theory. The results confirmed four views. (1) Choosing the modern agriculture project entrepreneurship is rational for professional farmers, who return from urban, to reduce the interference from non-market factors. The success of this project stems from its ability to successfully occupy the structural hole of the market trading network. (2) In economically developed areas, professional farmers start their businesses and reduce transaction costs with factors by occupying ‘self-benefit’ or ‘mutual-benefit’ structural holes in market networks. (3) In traditional agricultural areas, for reducing factor transaction costs, professional farmers occupy the organizational-governance structural hole of rural social relationship networks and the mutual-benefit structural hole of market networks to start their businesses. (4) The embedding order of these two structural holes will change depending on the differences in the local resource endowment. This article proposes some suggestions to encourage professional farmers to develop featured agricultural projects, build a close benefit-linked mechanism with smallholders through the provision of socialized services, and participate in the governance of rural communities.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Benefit-linked mechanism / featured agriculture / organizational integration / professional farmers / rural cooperative / structural hole theory

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (18BJY142).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yifeng Zhang, Chunfang Yang, Bright Obuobi, and Martin Kobby Grant declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2022. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)