Network Learning, Principal-Agent Conflict, and Award-Winning Wine-Making in Chile's Colchagua Valley

Chile’s Colchagua Valley is both a geographical cluster of wineries and a dynamic learning network of wine-making professionals. A principal-agent problem arises in that the latter knowledge network is frowned upon by owners and top managers. Whereas experts aim at maximising quality, firms are interested in profits. Individual, personal success as a world-class expert is worth more to each professional, than to the respective winery. This conflict is compounded by traditional, authoritarian industrial relations. Multiple regression results confirm that expert network activity is a very poor predictor of award-winning international performance, or profits.