The enforcement of contracts is necessary for efficient exchange and investment in economic activities. Contracts can be enforced through a variety of mechanisms, both public and private. However, in many developing and transitional countries these public institutions are either absent or...

Reform in the transitional economies can be characterized by large falls in agricultural output and by strong decapitalization of the agricultural production system. A key factor has been the disruption caused by the breakup of the pre-reform, vertically integrated, centrally planned,...

Successful value creation requires not only exploiting productivity gaps but also pursuing the opportunity gaps that technological innovation and changing customer preferences provide. However, the pursuit of opportunity gaps requires firms to refocus their energies toward developing new,...

The structure of the New Zealand merino industry has been through a period of rapid organizational change and marketing innovation over the past decade. This has seen it move away from a publicly regulated spot auction market structure characterised by undifferentiated product receiving pooled...

This paper explores the importance of a producer’s market orientation on their subjective performance within agricultural commodity markets. Using a structural equation model of beef producers, our findings suggest that market oriented firms are highly innovative and achieve superior...

A market orientation has been shown to lead to improved firm performance in a variety of industries (Narver and Slater, 1990; Deshpande et al., 1993). In previous research, it has been argued that performance benefits are a result of a greater awareness of the sources of value the product provides...

As the economic viability of small farms continues to be an issue facing policy makers and economists alike, a market orientation may be a valuable resource producers can develop as they compete in a marketplace dominated by larger firms. Marketing and strategy scholars have long established the...

Recent instances of significant food safety breeches in both meat and biotechnology challenge traditional safety efforts. A formal model utilizing agency theory is used to explore the power relationships between the regulator and the firm. Fundamental issues effecting firms' supply of safety are...