Sweden’s agriculture industry has faced many challenges in recent years. Among the most severe challenges are the decrease in the number of small and medium-sized farms, the decrease in the number of people employed in agricultural activities, and the increase in governmental regulations and legislation governing such activities. At the same time, the demand that agriculture contributes to sustainable social and ecological development has increased. Although research shows that sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) contributes to the creation of sustainable businesses and to the development of a sustainable society, Swedish agriculture has not been at the forefront in the use of SBMI. The purpose of this paper is to examine the barriers to SBMI in Swedish agriculture in order to understand why farmers seldom engage in SBMI. This qualitative study follows the Gioia methodology and data for the analysis were acquired in semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs at six family farms in Sweden. The paper makes a theoretical contribution to the research on SBMI with its focus on sustainable entrepreneurship in the Swedish agricultural industry. The paper concludes that the barriers to SBMI are external, internal, and contextual.

As a complement to previous studies about barriers to development of business models (BM) and innovation in agriculture and agri-food, conducted in retrospective, this study were conducted during the pressure of an ongoing barrier in form of a crisis caused by the extreme drought of the summer 2018. The situation caused major challenges for Swedish farmers, and I was wondering how such an ongoing stressful situation affect strategic management and innovation of the farms? Hence, behaviours and thinking during the drought were studied by semi-structured in-depth interviews with six farmers in the southern part of Sweden. The paper answer to calls about further exploring how rural entrepreneurs absorb and recover from shocks (Korsgaard, Müller and Tanvig, 2014), and entrepreneurial strategies in agriculture to understand under what circumstances or among which type of farms an increased entrepreneurial orientation (EO) can lead to increased performance (Dias et al., 2019; Veidal and Flaten, 2014). Some general considerations appeared in the study. First, the farmers were hesitant about the word "crisis", as there are other things that have been much worse for them, both private and concerning not transitory business problems. Second, the mental stress was emphasized. Third, the effects of strategic planning, of both management, innovation, learning, and approach of stressful situations were illustrated. Mind-set, experiences and learning, and self-leadership were facilitating factors that emerged in the study. The study indicate that crisis creates new ways of thinking and acting, both in terms of new collaborations, innovative working methods, and product and process development, hence suggest that developed EO can lead to increased performance during stressful situations. Further, the importance of strategic long term discussions about both life situation and the business is emphasized. The paper also highlights some important factors when approaching challenges and strains, and complement previous research about barriers to BMI conducted in retrospective. This increased understanding is useful both for researchers and practice working with entrepreneurs and business development to facilitate prioritization of efforts and activities.

Entrepreneurship and innovation are regarded as key factors in the development of society - not least in the development of sustainable rural areas, where they are emphasised by both authorities and research. This thesis is situated in this field of inquiry and studies entrepreneurship in agriculture. It explores how we can further develop both agriculture and sustainable rural areas. Farmers have traditionally played a significant role in rural areas and rural development, and still do. However in pace with societal development and the reduced number of farms and farm production, their role has changed. Today, they are considered as raw material producers, being the first link in a food chain, and active in landscape conservation in the countryside. However, agriculture plays a significant role in rural development and in Sweden, authorities strive for development of sustainable rural areas by encouraging economic growth and innovation within and between companies (business models, value chains etc.). They work with economic growth strategies, but both their management and results are criticised (OECD, 2019).This thesis states that greater contextualized knowledge is required to facilitate sustainable rural and agricultural development. Against this background, the purpose of this thesis is to explore entrepreneurship in agriculture from different perspectives, to find mechanisms affecting value creation for sustainable rural development.

To meet the research purpose, Swedish agricultural entrepreneurship was studied from different perspectives and data was collected with different methods enabling significant triangulation of data. Studies of challenges in entrepreneurship and sustainable rural development were conducted from individual farmer and business perspectives as well as from the individual and organisational levels of actors within the support system, actors such as advisors, authorities, policy makers and officials. Thus, it was possible to explore perspectives on entrepreneurship in agriculture and identify mechanisms and structures affecting value creation for sustainable rural development. Mechanisms can be explained as underlying, invisible and sometimes unconscious and non-rational factors, feelings, norms, values or attitudes that affect behaviour in various ways.

The key theories and literature covered included the concept of entrepreneurship with the intertwined sub-concepts of innovation and management at individual, business, organisational and societal levels.The thesis probed under the surface of rural development, exploring agricultural development at business level by using the concepts of Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Business Model Innovation and Barriers to Sustainable Business Model Innovation when exploring the challenges farmers face. The concepts of Self-leadership, Emotional Intelligence and Entrepreneurial Orientation helped to explore how challenges are approached, by for example understanding mechanisms concerned with feelings and mind-set. Further, the thesis also studied how entrepreneurship was encouraged and supported by the agricultural support system, and, with help from the Complexity Leadership Theory, established the urgent need of adaption to environmental changes and the creation of innovation within the system. The concepts of Agricultural and Rural Entrepreneurship and Embeddedness helped in understanding and shed light on the importance of considering the mutual influence and interplay between farmers, actors within the support system, embeddedness in context and rural entrepreneurship.

This thesis makes several contributions. It extends knowledge about entrepreneurship in agriculture by highlighting the importance of understanding embeddedness and the concept of agricultural sustainability, and by this providing evidence of the importance of including agriculture in entrepreneurship research. Consequently, this thesis has another viewpoint than previous research which states that farmers are not entrepreneurial and has overlooked agriculture in entrepreneurship research.

Firstly, it shows that farmers, to a very considerable degree, contribute to sustainable rural development and also play the role of enabler for rural entrepreneurship. Second, by exploring the support system, and thereby providing insights into the challenges within the system, in the organisations and betweenthe organisations, this thesis shows transparency and improved understanding of challenges in for example communication, trust, management and culture. Further, a model contributes suggestions for how to improve the system and create innovation to enable encouragement of entrepreneurship in agriculture. Third, this thesis contributes to business model research by illustrating the importance of including and reflecting on embeddedness in context and the understanding of agricultural sustainabilityin business model innovation. Hence, this thesis extends previous business model research which mainly considered agriculture as the first step in a food production chain, exposed to the same challenges as other non-agricultural companies further up the value chain. By providing insights about challenges to farmers’ entrepreneurship, and how these challenges can be approached as well as how entrepreneurship can be encouraged and supported in agriculture, this thesis can contribute to policies and strategies shifting focus from primarily trying to transform farmers into traditional entrepreneurs to taking advantage of the enabling role played by farmers. This thesis contributes to show the diversity in entrepreneurship, by providing understanding of entrepreneurship in agriculture, where value creation extends far beyond individual companies and competitive advantages, and hence impacts sustainable rural development.

This article contributes to the debate on entrepreneurs’ role in societies as well as the consequences of rural embeddedness and engagement, or the role of farmers in rural development and entrepreneurship. A contextualized view of farmers embedded—both spatially and positionally— in the entrepreneurial ecosystems is applied. The study, based on interviews with 24 farmers, 6 observations, and 8 interviews with actors within the agricultural support system, uses the Gioia methodology for analysis, thus enabling inductive theorizing. We find that farmers’ multifunctional role and their impact on societal development are central to understanding farmers’ entrepreneurial endeavours as well as their engagement in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Hence, this article discusses farmers’ embeddedness in rural society and development processes. It highlights the multifunctional role of farmers in society, which we argue make them enablers for rural development, an important role that has been overlooked in both entrepreneurship research and policy work.

Agricultural advisors have recently received much critique both in practice and in the literature for not answering agricultural entrepreneurs’ need for support in the ongoing industry transformation. Advisors expect to guide highly pressured agricultural entrepreneurs operating in complex settings towards sustainable businesses in highly competitive markets. The current study using complexity leadership theory goes beyond the surface of the agricultural advisors’ everyday work by exploring challenges faced by the advisors and considering how to overcome them. The advisors’ genuine intentions and common mission guiding the development of sustainable agricultural businesses and a vibrant countryside is not enough to achieve the goals. We identify an emergent need for innovation in the leadership of advisory work and conceptualize enabling mechanisms to accomplish such change. We suggest that the creation of adaptive space as a lubricant gives innovation the opportunity to flourish through enabling leadership.

Framtidens arbetsmarknad kommer att kräva en förändring av dagens kompetenser och färdigheter. Common Core handlar om att rusta dagens studenter för de utmaningar som den högteknologiska framtiden kommer att innebära. Högskolan i Halmstads vision är att vara ett lärosäte vars forskning och utbildning speglas av (VIS) värdeskapande, innovationsdrivande och samhällsutvecklande. I ljuset av det har högskolestyrelsen beslutat att genomföra ett omfattande strategiskt utvecklingsarbete. Detta innefattar ett bildningskoncept, i form av en gemensam kärna av kurser med fokus på samhällsutmaningar, på samtliga grundutbildningsprogram med planerad start 2020. Grundtanken med Common Core är att stimulera studenters intellektuella och praktiska förmåga att se sig själv och sin kunskap i en vidare kontext, förstå hur olika aspekter i vår globala värld samspelar och hur relationen mellan teknik, människa och samhälle fungerar. Vidare ska studenterna få möjlighet utveckla de kompetenser som framtiden och därmed arbetsmarknaden kräver. Då detta i grunden är ett top-down beslut, så har det inte varit oproblematiskt eller friktionsfritt. Tvärtom har det funnits ett uttalat motstånd i olika delar av organisationen, inte minst hos lärare som har pekat på svårigheterna med att införa ytterligare kurser i befintliga program och därmed har haft svårt att se vinsterna med Common Core. Det är inte ovanligt att det uppstår motstånd vad gäller förändringsarbete inom högre utbildning (Baume & Popovic, 2016).

Processen med utvecklingsarbetet har drivits framåt genom en styrgrupp, bestående av såväl lärare som studenter vilka har bidragit med olika kompetenser. För att säkerställa att arbetet har rätt riktning har det vid flera tillfällen genomförts diskussioner och workshops med representanter från näringslivet och studenter. Dessa har gemensamt visat på behovet av en bildning, perspektiv och vikten av olika generiska förmågor. Vidare har styrgruppen genom samtal och studiebesök inspirerats och tagit lärdom från Hong Kong University, då de har ett väl inarbetat Common Core-koncept (commoncore.hku, 2018). För att ett högskoleövergripande koncept ska bli framgångsrikt krävs transparens och kontinuerlig intern förankring. Det har därför genomförts ett flertal inspirationsföreläsningar, pilotprojekt och workshops med fokus att säkerställa att konceptet är väl underbyggt och accepterat i organisationen.

Utvecklingsarbetet har resulterat i en Common Core-struktur som innebär en strimma på totalt 18 hp, fördelat över tre år, som fullt implementerat kommer ingå i samtliga grundutbildningsprogram. Under termin 1 och 2 läser studenterna två gemensamma kurser, dels en introduktionskurs samt en kurs kring ”Vad är vetenskap och akademisk kommunikation”. Under termin 3-5 väljer studenterna tre olika kurser utifrån ett högskoleövergripande kursutbud. Grundtanken är att det i de olika kurserna blir en sammansättning av studenter från olika program, med olika ämneskompetenser som tillsammans skapar dynamik när de gemensamt ska arbeta med nutida och framtida samhällsutmaningar utifrån olika perspektiv.

Syftet med det här konferensbidraget är dels att beskriva Common Core som koncept, dels att diskutera problematiken med att genomföra och implementera högskoleövergripande projekt då organisatoriska strukturer skapar både möjligheter och hinder.

Purpose: The purpose of this empirical paper is to illustrate two leadership development programs in Swedish agriculture. Further, it is to compare the two programs related to outcomes in terms of barriers and challenges in the development process and suggest possible ways to continue the leadership development for business model innovation in the agricultural sector.

Design/methodology/approach: The data collection includes 54 interviews and a survey sent to 109 entrepreneursin Sweden. The interviews were collected with (i) entrepreneurs who participated in the Project ‘Ledarpraktikan’ (‘Leader practice’) (LP) 2013 and (ii) entrepreneurs who participated in the project ‘Lean Agriculture’ (LA) 2012. The survey was sent in the spring 2017 to 109 entrepreneurs (37 from ´LP´, 35 from ´LA´ and 37 not having participated in any of the programs called control group ´CG´). The overall response rate in the survey is 68% (51% from ´LP´, 80% from ´LA´ and 73% from ‘CG’. Content analysis and descriptive analysis have been used in the study.

Findings: From the qualitative studies, we can see that entrepreneurs having participated in ‘LP’ perceive that they have acquired deeper knowledge and understanding regarding selfleadership than entrepreneurs participating in ´LA´. The latter entrepreneurs also have described their need for more knowledge in self-leadership. The entrepreneurs participating in ´LA´ have, through analysis of the day-to-day work, acquired a more developed systematic working environment. The comparison between the three groups in the survey show that there are several similarities between the groups, for example they don´t see institutional rules to be barriers in their firm development process. We have found differences in barriers for business development in terms of (i) growth willingness, (ii) lack of employees, (iii) lack of support and (iv) lack of spare time.

Practical implications: There is a need for further leadership development knowledge in Swedish agriculture, both for entrepreneurs in the development of their business models and for agricultural advisors regarding their new role as coaches instead of traditional advisers.

Policy implications: It is important that organizations supporting financial solutions for the agricultural businesses also support leadership development programmes in the industry.

Originality/value: The originality with the paper is that there has been two large analyses regarding two leadership development programs in Swedish agriculture, which is unique in this industry.

The purpose of this article is to deepen our understanding of what we know about business model innovation in the agri-food sector, both from a theoretical as well as a practical perspective. The methodological approach used in the paper is built on interviews, focus groups and observations of agricultural entrepreneurs and agricultural advisors in the agriculture sector and a review of over 500 peer-reviewed research papers for the period 1990-2014. The findings of the study indicate that entrepreneurs within the agri-food sector ought to shift focus from only a producer perspective to also include an entrepreneurial perspective, e.g. to focus on business model innovation. Based on this knowledge the authors present implications for research and practice. The research field is young and broad, but developing, and in need of stronger theoretical foundations. This article is based on a combination of a systematic literature review of a new emerging field as well as empirical in-depth interviews, focus groups and observations. © 2016, IGI Global.

Purpose

Because the business model is a fairly new concept, research is lacking on business model innovation in certain industry sectors. One such sector is the agri-food sector. Using a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published from 1990 to 2014, this paper examines the where, when, and how of the use of business models and business model innovation in the agri-food sector.

Design/methodology/approach

A web-based search was conducted to identify peer-reviewed journal articles that contained a combination of “business model” or “business model innovation” with agriculture-related and food-related terms (e.g., “agri-food sector”). After winnowing out irrelevant and duplicate articles, 505 articles were chosen for analysis.

Findings

Using categories, the paper analyses various data about the selected articles. The categories include research settings, units of analysis, methodologies, and theories. Based on this analysis, the paper finds that these agri-food sector articles are primarily qualitative, empirical studies that focus on one or a few companies (i.e., case studies). The paper also finds that theory is not yet well developed in the research on the agri-food sector.

Originality/value

Systematic literature reviews of various concepts, theories, and models are common in many fields (e.g., information/software technology, healthcare, and organizational management). However, no such review is available for the agri-food sector, in particular in its use of business models and business model innovation. This paper addresses that gap with its review of relevant articles published in more than 300 journals in recent years. Based on this review, the paper draws conclusions about business model innovation in the agri-food sector and offers suggestions for future research. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited

The importance of business model innovation (BMI) is widely recognized. BMI is especially important in the agri-food industry that faces enormous challenges as the demand for food increases worldwide. Much of the BMI research focuses on the technology and biomedical industries. Far less attention has been paid to the agri-food industry. This article is a systematic literature review of the BMI research in the agri-food industry. The article’s aim is to identify and categorize various barriers to BMI as described in the literature (in English) published in peer-reviewed journals between 1990 and 2014. The findings show a fairly even distribution among external and internal BMI barriers. Because the main barrier is the mind-set that is resistant to change, it is recommended the researchers and practitioners should focus more on the cognitive barriers to BMI in the agri-food industry.

Purpose: The paper compares two government-sponsored education programs for agricultural entrepreneurs: a Leadership program and a Lean program. Methodology: The paper takes both a qualitative and a quantitative approach in its collection and analysis of data from 54 semi- structured interviews and from a survey with 109 participants. Findings: The main challenges to business and personal development are time pressure and the need for better communications. The Leadership program participants emphasize the effect of internal barriers such asfixed mind-sets. The Lean program participants emphasize the effect of external barriers such asfinancing. Both groups emphasize personal and business growth more than the control group. Practical Implications: Entrepreneur education programs can help participants, program developers, and advisory organizations identify and manage business challenges and barriers. Theoretical Implications: The paper contributes to the literature about educations for entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector with its examination of agricultural entrepreneurs’reflections on barriers and challenges in business development and their linkage to overcoming barriers focused on a resource-based perspective with different types of resources. Originality/Value: The paper encourages examination of development challenges and barriers from the perspective of participators in entrepreneur education programs. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Purpose:

This article describes the five-phase process of a leadership development programme conducted with agricultural entrepreneurs who own and manage dairy farms in Sweden. The programme primarily focused on leadership of employees and on self-leadership. The article’s purpose is to present a template for leadership development programmes that can be used in the agricultural sector and in other industry sectors as well.

Design/Methodology:

The empirical data come from interviews with agricultural entrepreneurs, agricultural advisors and authors of a book on leadership in its various forms. Observations were also conducted of the instruction in the leadership development programme.

Findings:

First, agricultural entrepreneurs (and possibly entrepreneurs in other sectors) benefit from leadership development programmes in which the concept and practice of self-leadership are emphasized. Second, such programmes are more valuable to participants if other actors (e.g. academics and advisors) are participants. Third, coaches are useful as support for the programmes’ participants. Practical Implications: An implication of this study is the finding that working with the knowledge transfer and dissemination to advisors and entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector can enhance leadership competences in the industry. Role transformation (e.g. advisor to coach) can also enhance the transfer of such leadership competences.

Theoretical implications:

An implication for theory is to include a self-leadership module in leadership theories about learning leadership in development programmes.

Originality/Value:

Knowledge transfer and dissemination through leadership development programmes for agricultural advisors and entrepreneurs can have a beneficial effect on industry leadership and management. In addition to the traditional leadership skills that many leadership development programmes teach, such programmes also need to emphasize self-leadership.

This conceptual paper focuses on the need for knowledge in leadership, organization and innovative thinking that exist in primary production throughout the value chain from the farm to the final consumer. There are also needs in terms of improving and developing the entire value chain from the farm to the final consumer. Self-leadership and lean innovation is in this paper proposed to enhance the possibilities for business model innovation in the food production. The aims of the paper are two folded; Firstly, the aim is to present a framework containing self-leadership and lean innovation and how these theoretical approaches can facilitate and shape business model innovation in the agricultural sector. Secondly, the aim is to show a way of working with this problem area in order to meet these needs in the agricultural sector. A framework for business model innovation is presented as well as an interactive research design addressing the problem area in terms of action research in which learning networks is an important concept. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research challenges.