Title: Exploring the collective dimension of agricultural entrepreneurship: the case of a wine cooperative in Italy

Authors: Antonella Garofano

Addresses: Department of Economics, University of Campania 'Luigi Vanvitelli', Corso Gran Priorato di Malta, 1, 81043, Capua (CE), Italy

Abstract: To date, a limited contribution has been given to the contextualisation of entrepreneurship in agriculture. Furthermore, existing studies on the sector mainly focused on individual farmers' skills and characteristics. Therefore, more research seems needed to investigate agricultural entrepreneurship within collective-owned firms, such as cooperatives. Based on these assumptions, this work aims at: 1) exploring the collective dimension of agricultural entrepreneurship; 2) providing a more nuanced perspective on how entrepreneurial opportunities are identified and pursued at the two distinct but interweaving levels of cooperative organisation, namely jointly-owned firm and owners-members. The paper focuses on the in-depth longitudinal case-study of a wine cooperative in the south of Italy with 1,000 members. Insights on how agricultural cooperatives may support small farmers and the whole territorial community are provided.

Keywords: agricultural entrepreneurship; collective entrepreneurship; wine cooperatives; farmers; Italy; innovation; sustainable development; case-study research.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2022.120977

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2022 Vol.45 No.2, pp.193 - 209

Received: 02 Jul 2020
Accepted: 12 Jan 2021
Published online: 21 Feb 2022 *

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