The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that governance structure and contractual form are two distinct concepts and that they should not be used interchangeably in both theoretical and empirical studies of transaction cost economics. Specifically, the choice of governance structure does not...

We empirically test the effect of separating ownership and control and its interaction with farmer effort on farm success using USDA-ARMS data. We use a two-stage least squares approach and instrumental variables that proxy participation constraints to binding incentive contracts. We find the...

Purpose: We examine the role and importance of trust in a type of Chinese farmer cooperative organization called “Farm Bases,” considering the extent to which trust affects their performance and how the relationship between trust and Farm Base performance is affected by perceptions of risk...

Generalized morality reflects ethical norms in society about the inappropriateness of behaviors that can cause harm to others. Generalized morality may be an important factor affecting the economic performance of countries. An indicator of generalized morality is constructed from data from the...

How do individual characteristics and the business environment affect the ethical judgment of entrepreneurs? We build on literatures in stakeholder and cognitive theory to examine the effects of situational complexity and novelty on an entrepreneur's ethical judgment. Our conceptual framework...

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis advances an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental pollution. Scholars have estimated turning point incomes for various pollutants within and across countries. However, the majority of these studies were conducted...

While the growth of family firms is widely recognized as important to the prosperity of free-market economies (Family Enterprise USA, 2011), a growing body of stakeholder research finds that family business ethics is important to advancing a society's moral progress. Yet, due to limits in...

A sustainable and equitable food and agricultural system cannot exist unless market participants perceive they are participating in a fair marketplace. Because claims of unfairness are made when expectations are violated, assessing claims of unfairness require that we understand how, where and...

We review research on power, dependency and the concentration of agrifood industries and report updated concentration figures for selected agrifood sectors. We then utilize network exchange theory to identify principles of dependency and network relations and describe network relationships...

Williamson argues that a principal will only trust an agent when there are safeguards to ensure the agent has an incentive for trustworthiness. However, such circumstances are devoid of vulnerability and possibility for betrayal. Williamson claims that this is not trust at all. I argue that a...