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The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical framework for assessing the effects representatives have on their client's perceptions of justice, outcome and satisfaction, as well as the treatment received by clients from other stakeholders, in workplace dispute resolution processes.

Research propositions are advanced based on constructs and theories drawn from the literature on organizational justice, in particular, as well as social psychology in general.

Representatives are hypothesized to have a profound effect on their client's perceptions of voice, participation and satisfaction as well as on the treatment accorded the client by the other side and third‐party neutral. Representation, per se, is heralded as neither a positive nor a negative force in workplace dispute resolution processes.

The framework of a representative's effects is limited by a focus on individual employees who pursue disputes arising out of the employment relationship against management and, therefore, excludes disputes involving groups as well as non‐employment related disputes.

Suggestions for expanding or contracting the role of representatives in workplace dispute resolution are discussed.

Although it is ubiquitous in US jurisprudence and is a growing presence in alternative dispute resolution, the representative‐client dyad has been unexplored. The impact representatives have on the client's perceptions of justice, and the effects representatives have on other stakeholders in the process, bear scrutiny.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the accountability practices of the directors in New Zealand and Australian dairy co-operatives. An interpretation of their practices, which focus on the relationship between directors and their farmer-shareholders, is informed by Roberts’ (2001a) understandings of a socializing accountability.

The fieldwork consists of interviews with 23 directors, including all chief executive officers and chairmen, of six dairy co-operatives together with observations and document analysis. These co-operatives together comprise a significant portion of the regional dairy industry. The methodology draws from Eisenhardt’s (1989) qualitative approach to theory formation.

The authors find that these directors engage in a discourse-based, community-grounded and egalitarian form of socializing accountability. As such, their practices adhere generally to Roberts (2001a) hopes for a more considerate and humble relationship between an accountor and an accountee.

Findings add to the small pool of research on the lived experiences of co-operative boards and to a parsimonious literature in socializing accountability practices. The contributions of the study are in advancing real understandings of alternative forms of accountability, in evaluating the conditions in which these alternatives may be likely to arise and in anticipating the challenges and opportunities that arise therefrom.

The originality of the project arises from accessing the views of these industry leaders and, through their frank expressions, coming to understand how they achieve a form of a socializing accountability in their relationships with farmer-shareholders.

This paper aims to investigate how actors in the farmer’s network influence the adoption of smart farming technology (SFT) and to understand how social media affects this adoption process, in particular focusing on the influence of social media on trust in knowledge dissemination within the network.

The methodology used a two-stage process, with semi-structured interviews of farmers, augmented by a netnographic approach appropriate to the social media context.

The analysis illustrates the key role of the farmer network in the dissemination of SFT knowledge, bringing insight into an important B2B context. While social media emerges as a valuable way to connect farmers and promote discussion, it remains underused in knowledge dissemination on SFT. Also, farmers exhibit more trust in the content from peers online rather than from SFT vendors.

Novel insights are gained into the influence of the farming network on the accelerated adoption of SFT, including the potential role of social media in mitigating the homophilous nature of peer-to-peer interactions among farmers through exposure to more diverse actors and information. The use of a social network theory lens has provided new insights into the role of trust in shaping social media influence on the farmer, with variances in farmer trust of information from technology vendors and from peers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a farm manager’s personal characteristics (personality, age, education, objectives, experience, etc.) as drivers of debt payback success and rates. Traditionally bankers have used historic business statistics, and equity levels, to assess loans and credit worthiness. It is hypothesised that a managers’ personal characteristics are likely to be a better predictor of future debt payback performance.

The literature was searched to isolate the managers’ personal variables likely to determine debt payback. The information led to defining a quantitative model based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) which was hypothesised as determining payback rates where a choice was available. A postal random stratified survey of NZ owner operator farm managers provided the data to test the model and define its parameters using regressions, structural equation modelling and statistical comparisons.

The modelling results make it clear a manager’s personal characteristics are highly correlated with debt payback and, logically, are very likely to be the drivers. Four random effects equations and a comparison of high- and low-debt payback managers led to this conclusion.

Bankers should use the managers’ personal characteristics, as defined in the regressions, alongside traditional measures when assessing farm business loan requests. This approach is opposite to the traditional methods using mainly historic data.

The use of the TPB in assessing debt payback is a new and novel approach showing how enduring personal characteristics can be used in assessing proposals, and particularly, entrepreneurs’ adventurist investments in situations where historic data are not available.

It is difficult to develop an overall picture of the practice of management accounting (MA) in farms and farm enterprises (FEs) because little research has been published on the topic, and these studies are mostly discrete and unconnected to the others. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the available research, develop an explanatory framework for MA practices in farming entities and identify some major avenues for future research on the topic.

This paper uses systematic literature review methods. After an extensive database search and an examination of references/citations, 41 empirical journal articles published between 1964 and 2016 are identified, described and analyzed in this research paper.

The findings reveal that the practice of MA in farms is subject to information problems and that the empirical research on this topic largely lacks a theoretical explanation. Therefore, the explanatory framework of MA practices in farming entities reveals that these practices are subject to influencing factors such as familism, government farm policies, market competition, technological changes, the seasons and the weather/climate.

The overall limited findings on the practice of MA in FEs indicate that caution should be taken when generalizing the current knowledge on the use of MA practices in other organizational forms to farming entities. Moreover, future research should draw on explicit theories to explain empirical results.

This paper is the first comprehensive literature review of studies on MA practices in farms and FEs.

Rising energy expenditures due to more intensive use of energy in modern agriculture and increasing energy prices may affect rural households’ agricultural incomes, particularly the incomes of the rural poor in developing countries. However, the exact link between energy costs and income among the rural poor needs further empirical investigation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between energy use and family income, using household-level panel data collected from 500 potato farmers in a poor region of Northern China, where eliminating poverty by 2020 is now the top government priority.

The paper uses household survey data collected from six counties in a poor region in northern China in 2013 to measure the relationship between energy cost and family income. A fixed effect model is employed to estimate the relationship.

The findings indicate that potatoes play an important role in the surveyed families’ incomes, and that the energy costs of potato production have a significant negative relationship with family income. However, this negative relationship is only significant for farmers with low economic standing, such as those living below or just above the poverty line. The negative relationship between energy costs and family income is only significant for those cultivating a certain size of potato-sown area; it is insignificant for those cultivating smaller areas.

These findings indicate that, in general, reducing energy costs helps the poor increase their income but is not necessarily helpful to those with high economic standing or a relatively small potato-sown area. If rural development policies are to support poverty reduction and energy savings (at least in major potato production regions), interventions aimed at energy cost reduction may be effective only for the poor whose family income depends, to a relatively high degree, on potato production.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize lessons from the agricultural value chain models and their associated financing mechanisms in China and India as to provide policy recommendations on how best to facilitate development of efficient and inclusive value chains.

The paper builds on a review of the existing literature on agricultural value chains and their financing mechanisms, and draws lessons from it for strengthening interface between product and financial markets in order to enable smallholders capture benefits of the value addition.

From the comparative review of value chain financing mechanisms and current policy contexts the authors find dominance of internal financing of value chains (in terms of provision of inputs, technology and services) in both the countries. Value chain finance from commercial banks and other financial institutions is limited and mainly through tripartite agreements among the financing institutions, lead firms and farmers.

The lessons drawn from various value chain models and their financing mechanisms provide feedback to financial institutions and policymakers to take measures to strengthen value chain finance in smallholder agriculture.

The paper undertakes a rigorous review of the existing value chain models and their financing mechanisms in light of the most recent research on emerging innovations and development strategies, in order to glean key lessons for policy recommendations on strengthening linkages between financial and product markets.

This research examines the impact of the National Rural E-commerce Comprehensive Demonstration Project (NRECDP) on poverty reduction and income growth in rural China.

The study develops a theoretical framework, which considers the role of geographical, technological, institutional and cultural factors for the e-commerce poverty alleviation (e-CPA) model. Empirically, this study applies the difference-in-differences (DID) model and the event study approach to evaluate the effectiveness of NRECDP on the basis of large-scale county-level and household-level panel data spanning 2010 to 2020.

The study found that the NRECDP, as a government-led, information and communication technology (ICT)-enabled, market-based program, has led to a significant increase in per capita output of primary industry employees, as well as in the disposable income of rural residents, especially those in national-level poverty-stricken (NP) counties. The interventions of the NRECDP achieved these positive outcomes through transportation and Internet infrastructure improvement, ICT adoption and human capital accumulation in impoverished towns and villages in remote rural areas. These effects are larger in the eastern region of China, followed by the central region, whereas the weakest effects were found in the western region. However, we found little evidence of the NRECDP increasing household developmental expenditure.

The study findings have important practical and policy implications for rural e-commerce development and self-sustained poverty alleviation solutions. The research revealed the significance of government NRECDP interventions for increasing rural income, reducing living costs, and empowering the rural population in its multiple social roles, namely, as consumers, producers, employees and microentrepreneurs. The local cultural context may also play a role in ICT adoption and entrepreneurship cultivation with a downstream effect on the effectiveness of e-CPA practices. Policymakers would need to ensure a supportive entrepreneur-friendly environment for rural e-commerce development and continue implementing progressive policies for poverty alleviation.

This study explores poverty alleviation issues in China by developing for the first time a multi-faceted framework that is subsequently tested by both county-level and household-level large-scale observations. Also, it is the first study to provide nationwide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of e-CPA in narrowing down the spatial and digital divides in China. In addition to the impact of geography, technology and governmental support, this study also sheds light on the role of culture in the adoption and diffusion of digital technologies and as a source of local entrepreneurial opportunities.

This paper aims to examine whether China's grain price support policy has distorted the grain market price.

The time-varying differences-in-differences (DID) model is used to study the impact of support policies on grain prices, and it is combined with the event study method to explore the dynamic effects of price support policy. Panel data model is used to study the effect of the price support policy on price formation for national grain market prices. In addition, we apply the smooth transformation (STR) model to verify whether there is a distortion in the transmission of grain prices among different markets in China and from the international market to China’s market.

China’s grain price support policy plays a significant role in rising grain market prices, weakens the decisive role of the market mechanism in the formation of grain prices, hinders the spatial transmission of market price signals and decreases the effect of price transmission from the world market to China’s market.

In order to ensure both the stability of grain production as well as the market stability, and also to ensure that intervention policies do not distort the food market, the minimum purchase price of grain and market regulation policies should be adjusted as follows: (1) price support policy should be shifted to an income support policy and (2) reasonably determine the scale of reserves and implement a grain minimum purchase price policy in limited areas.

Our findings are relevant for understanding the effect of China's grain price support policies on the implementation regions and the price transmission effect, which provide reference experience for developing countries to implement food price policies.