TONY KINDER University of Edinburgh
Summary
The paper reviews research literature on the importance for agri-food SME growth of industrial networks. It presents four new case studies on the migration of networks in Poland based upon original empirical research. It argues that exogenous explanations of network success or determinism resulting from physical endowment are insufficient explanations of the ability of agri-food networks to migrate towards demand-led, international orientation and become innovative networks.
Keywords: agri-food, Poland, network migration 1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
Poland, with almost 40 million citizens is located in the rapidly growing Central European region. Since its establishment in 1989, Poland has transformed itself into a stable, democratic country with strong institutions; further enhanced by accession into the European Union (EU) in 2004. Successes in Poland are built on major structural reforms and privatization, strong export performance, over €100 billion foreign direct investment inflows, and a highly educated and skilled workforce, of which 50% are under the age of 34. Poland is one of the largest countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the sixth most populous state in the EU. Located at the crossroads of Eastern and Western Europe, Poland extends from the Baltic coast in the north to the Czech Republic and Slovakia borders in the south, and from Germany in the west to Russia, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine in the east.
With 17% of the population engaged in agri-foods (producing, processing and logistics), the sector’s future is critical, despite contributing only 2.9% to GDP. Agri-food markets in Poland are integrated into the wider economy, based upon a competitive private sector, dominated by small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Domestic food consumption is dramatically changing as incomes rise (more eating-out, more prepared food and healthier food), as are retail distribution patterns. EU states are Poland’s main trading partners for its agri-food surplus, accounting for over half (51.6%) of the turnover in farm and food trade in 2003. The main partners on the export side are: Germany, Netherlands, Great Britain and Italy; and on the import side are Germany, Netherlands, Spain and Italy. Since 2002, Polish agri-food exports have grown by some 25% per year, generating a € 6 billion income and € 1 billion surplus. This trade substantially relies on revenue from processed animal products and fruit. The challenges for Polish agri-food are to move up international value chains to compete against process food imports and to increase the
value-added element in their exports. The ability of agri-food SME networks to successfully change and export is therefore crucial to the country’s future – the subject of this paper.
1.2. Historical and cultural background
The weight of history weighs heavy in Poland and its agriculture. Since the (late) abolition of serfdom (see Lukowski and Zawadzki 2001), agri-food in Poland has been dominated by two competing traditions, from the viewpoint of social capital creation and exploitation. Social capital here (see Bourdieu 1984 and 1985) is the rules encoded in institutions interrelate with habituses and are shaped over time by them as practices embodied in people through practice become embedded rules: cognition without consciousness. In Poland’s case, the struggle for national and cultural independence gave rise to individualism celebrated in high levels of cultural achievement, education and adaptation of innovation. A countervailing tendency of individualism, resulting in low social capital, has been a limited cooperation and social trust in the generation and exploitation of knowledge, often limiting business networking to transactionally defined projects. In agri-food patterns of social capital creation are uneven. For example, the middle and west of the country demonstrate higher levels of cooperation than the east (compare Wielkopolska and Pomorze with Małopolska and Podlasie). As Lukowski and Zawadzki (2001) this lack of social cohesion, (for example during the Republic of the Gentry i.e. first republic: fourteenth to sixteenth century) resulting in one of the many foreign incursions and divisions of the country. Nonetheless, regions such as Wielkopolska, Pomorze and a part of Silesia, continued to prosper agriculturally, enjoying a strong work ethic, modernising culture and stable agri-food enterprise structures. These structures were echoed in the social and political structures that kept alive the struggle for independence. In terms of social capital, the first farmers circles, (formed to cooperate in production, processing and logistics), were formed by Pomeranian landholders in 1849, resulting in above average levels of productivity. Only later did agricultural cooperation development in what was the Russian dominated part of Poland (Królestwo Polskie) in the early twentieth century (see http://www.naleczow.com.pl/gazeta/2006/44/index.php). By the end of the second Polish Republic in 1938, 162,600 Polish farmers and agri-food players were in 9,720 agricultural circles (superceded by the 1944 decision to create Units of Peasant Self-Help in Liberated Lands). Only after 1957 did independent agri-food circles begin to re-emerge from the dead-hand of collectivised farming. The heritage of the destruction of independent agri networking remains apparent in Poland, which continue to have lower levels of networking than other EU states.
Today, registered producer groups number twelve in Wielkopolska Province, nine in Kujawy and Pomorze and also Małopolskie, eight in Dolnolskie and Podkarpackie and seven in Mazowieckie Province. These range in size from under ten people to over 2,000. Since accession to the EU (2004), self-confident Poles in agriculture have registered 155 new agri-food groups (mainly horizontal networks). In typical Polish fashion, these have pragmatic aims: sharing resources, diffusing learning, identifying opportunities from combination. This paper analyses the dynamics of a agri-food network in the Kujawy and Pomorze Province, exploring its ability to exploit the positive cultural traditions in Polish agri-food by innovating and exploiting new (international market opportunities).
1.3. Contribution and structure
The paper give a brief case study of four Polish agri-food networks, three of which are SME networks: one of which is pre-Soviet, one Soviet era and one post-Soviet era. The fourth case is of a recently formed agri-food network of large landowners. It analyses the nature of these networks and considers their future prospects, from the perspective of organisational change. In particular, it examines the drivers and constraints of shifting agri-food networks towards an international and market orientation, away from a national and producer orientation.
Drawing upon new institutionalist perspectives, such as Amin (1999) and Martin (2000), and reflecting upon the work of Stöhr (1987), European writers have criticised resource-based spatial development theory as treating technology and knowledge as exogenous. In effect, this European School are challenging the network/clustering ideas of Porter (1995) which privileges physical endowment and Krugman (1991, 1998 and 1999) with its emphasis on the balance between centripetal and centrifugal economic forces. We are especially interested to consider the impact of different types of heritage on the ability of agri-food networks to alter strategic direction. Whilst generally clusters of SMEs may only prove sustainably successful when they are able to innovate products for world markets (Laffitte 1989), the position of Polish agriculture, following EU accession is an opportunity to rapidly access international markets, from a relatively poor infrastructure base, provided they are able to negotiate new governances, supporting the acquisition of relevant product/market knowledge in new sets of institutional arrangements (Alaluf and Vanheerswynghels 1988), shifting from price competition, to quality and value-added service competition (Hobbs 1996).
Our framework is a synthesis from network analysis (Perrow 1979; Stöhr (1987; Streeck 1992; Amin and Thrift 1992; and Storper 1997), and was used in Kinder (2007) to analyse changing agri-networks in Andaluciá. As figure 1 illustrates, our framework features structural, agency, financial and knowledge flow parameters.
Parameters Network organisation characteristics Control/ownership Possibly shared ownership and assets with the network? Governance and
communications
Interdependency of systems and process with network including cross-institutional arrangements e.g. public-private?
Purpose and goals Explicit, shared and collective goals?
Hierarchy Structures: flat, facilitating discourse and unmediated communications? Leadership Led by specialists with the knowledge and ability to envision,
communicate and operationalise change
Functional integration Functionally integrated and user-orientated, avoiding vertical integration and uses commitment-based human relations?
Products Project rather than programme focus creating customised outcomes, targeting emerging markets and stakeholders?
Ecology Inter-relationships between communities of practice?
Trust Long-term trusting relationships based upon mutual advantage and including knowledge flows?
Risk Risk syndication via networks encouraging and supporting high risk taking
Figure 1: Characteristics of the networked organisation Source: own investigations
In overall terms, we are analysing the extend to which agri-food networks in Poland are innovative or traditional – whether their parameters show them to be on a trajectory of change towards competing in international markets with a demand-led perspective or whether they retain characteristics likely to restrict their activity to national or regional markets, preserving a supply-led focus in their activities.
Section two of the paper outlines method and section three presents four short case studies, structured by the framework in figure 1 of agri-food networks in Poland. In section four we analyse these results addressing the research question above. Section five draws our conclusions for network migration strategies, public policy and further research.
2. Method
Put above thesis on relatively low level of development of cooperation forms in producer networks belonged to agri-food SME sector in Poland and their regional differentiation was positively verified on the base of questionnaire survey results which were carried out in some differentiated organizations.
Population of shareholders – farmers associated in The Wielkopolska Gildia Rolno-Ogrodnicza – Wielkopolska Agri-Horticultural Wholesale Market PLC in Pozna – (Pozna Guild) – WGRO SA amounts to 600: 300 owning bigger shares and 300 ones owning small shares.
Association of Agricultural Employers, Leasers and Owners (Zwizek Pracodawców-Dzierawców i Włacicieli Rolnych) –ZPDWR associates around 1000 members. Polish Association of Pig Breeders and Producers – PZHiPTCh in Kujawy and Pomorze Province includes around 123 members.
Cattle Breeders And Milk Producers Federation – PFHBiPM in Kujawy and Pomorze Province includes 1000 members (give services for about 1600 farms).
In a case of representatives of members of farmer organizations there were representatives both farmers-breeders and farmers voted to govern with those organizations, in case of WGRO SA there were representatives of the Management Staff.
Within questionnaire were put closed and opened questions, but all of them let express asked people their opinions in wider context explaining reasons of the answers.
The survey was an interview with selected peoples of the sample in according to specified questions.
Preliminary survey and the main one were made first with representatives of POLSUS SA company dealt with administration of PZHiPTCh (pig breeders) and also with farmers and representatives of The Management of it in May 2007. Also in May 2007 were asked representatives of WGRO SA Management. At the beginning of June was made questionnaire survey on the base of interview with representatives of PFHBiPM (dairy farmers) Management and associated farmers. At the end of July 2007 were asked representatives of ZPWDR Management and Administration– of organization associated Big Agricultural Owner and Leasers. Asked persons represented both the ZPWDR Management and administration staff and CERPLON Company being its member as well.
In July 2007 all questionnaire data were verified and elaborated using additional comments of interviewed people.
3. Agri-food SME networks in Poland
3.1. Wielkopolska Agri-Horticultural Wholesale Market
The Wielkopolska Gildia Rolno-Ogrodnicza – Wielkopolska Agri-Horticultural Wholesale Market PLC in Pozna (WGRO SA or Pozna Guild) is a horizontal and vertical network of agri-product sellers and warehousing of flowers, fruit and vegetables, coupled with financial and state support. WGRO is a post-Soviet era agri-foods brokerage network. It is constituted as a private company, with profit-seeking goals, and owns a patented logo and trademark (WGRO product and WGRO flower), databases and computing system. Suppliers join free, whilst purchasers pay to join. Each seller has a notice board in the database and on the web, in which to profile its products. Apart from direct sales, purchasers are able to commission future production contracts (often associated with starter-contract payments for seeds and equipment. Such contracts, (e.g. for cucumbers) encourage producers to amalgamate to secure large size orders, with purchasers bearing all or some of the market (future price) and natural (frost, hailstorm) risk. The network thus redresses market power relations between small producers and large purchasers. It has a legal affairs office to settle disputes: an advantage to small firms, since as Balcerowicz (2007) illustrates, legal processes in Poland can be slow and expensive and act against small firms (especially in international contracting).
WGRO SA is owned by its shareholders: 35.7% individuals, 44% Foundation for Agriculture Development, 8% Wielkopolska Gardening Association (giving 20.8% of votes), 4.5% the PKO BP SA bank, and 5.4% the Treasury Ministry. Shareholders appoint Directors, who appoint managers.
Communications in WGRO SA are more advanced than in the three networks featured below, with some use of email. Information distribution around HACCP is viewed as a long-term educational campaign, though in some areas (e.g. salad producers) compliance has been rapid. WGRO prides itself on distributing information on advanced agri-food techniques and technologies.
Trust amongst WGRO SA members is built into the shared contract model, which depends upon mutual cooperation. As the market expands (as recently) engendering trust is unproblematic. WGRO SA aims to lower business risk by bringing in new investors, just as shared and futures contracting as lowered natural risks.
3.2. Cattle Breeders and Milk Producer’s Federation
The Cattle Breeders and Milk Producer’s Federation (PFHBiPM) is a horizontal cooperation and advocacy network and oriented towards production rather than marketing and to national rather than international markets. Originally funded by the state, these subsidies are now diminishing, with funding reverting to PFHBiPM members as it becomes wholly independent. PFHBiPM is not itself a signatory to contracts which resides with individual members. As a national association it has regional offices and employs some 1,000 staff. It tracks and records animal health and breeding, offers laboratory testing of milk and arranges access to (four state-owned) insemination services (which the PFHBiPM aims to purchase). Apart from insemination charges, breeders pay an annual subscription and a fee for each animal enrolled.
Members periodically elect national officers. Communications are pre-digital (meetings, telephone and paper communications) for example around milking plants, slaughtering, meals and
other food processing, and distributing plants. These smaller scale producers are less prone to adopt international standards and new technologies than larger scale ZPDWR members.
In terms of governances, to date, many smaller milk producers supplying local markets have avoided compliance with higher quality standards by competing on low prices. PFHBiPM’s President recognises that this is not a sustainable position, even in domestic markets, as customers learn that higher quality and low prices are possible. Perhaps as part of an adjustment period, quotas of milk production were recently temporarily increased and may be eased over a longer period in poorer regions.
Like the PZHiPTCh, trust amongst PFHBiPM members is limited, since they compete for customers and network resources. For both sets of producers, bio-security and market risk remain important considerations for small companies: the two networks help in risk assessment and addressing some bio-security risks, however market risk remains.
3.3. Polish Association of Pig Breeders and Producers (PZHiPTCh)
Whilst WGRO SA is post-Soviet era and PFHBiPM originated in the pre-Soviet period, the Polish Association of Pig Breeders and Producers PZHiPTCh was created during the Soviet period (see http://www.polsus.pl/kontakt.php). It was privatised and charges members an annual subscription fee and charges for services such as insemination and animal treatment. The association subsidies training and business networking travel abroad.
Officers are periodically elected by members. Communications are traditional, though the PZHiPTCh has plans to extend digital communications with members and customers. Information on prices is particularly important to network members to counter-balance the power of large international purchasers. As smaller scale producers PZHiPTCh members are slower to adopt international standards and new technologies than larger scale ZPDWR members, including capital-intensive automation and mechanisation. Some members of PZHiPTCh (and PFHBiPM) believe that international standards may reduce the taste of their products and that traditional techniques create a better quality product. It remains that case that in local markets, traditional producers (e.g. of cheese and meat) are still able to charge a premium.
Governance arrangements affecting PZHiPTCh are more transparent as it becomes independent of the state. Nonetheless, as in all economies, interactions with regulatory agencies remain important. For example, PZHiPTCh is working with Government against black market breeders, seeking to reduce the cost to all breeders of loss of integrity in the system. The association is also concerned that the state should bear at least some of the (estimated € 80 million) cost of eradicating Pseudorabies, to comply with EU import regulations.
3.4. Association of Agricultural Employers, Leasers and Owners (Związek Pracodawców-DzierĪawców i WłaĞcicieli Rolnych (ZPDWR)
The ZPDWR (http://www.federacjarolna.pl), often referred to as the big farmers, was established larger agriculture employers (including former large state enterprises) and leasing companies as an advocacy network to defend their interests. To some extent they see this goal as becoming more important within the EU, which they perceive as favouring small and family-owned agri-food producers. Their primary activity has been defending that status quo against market-oriented change. Along with the state Treasury Agricultural Estate Agency (ANR) they are the main agriculture landlords. Members pay fees to the ZPDWR, which employs lobbyists and runs national and regional offices.
Members, who periodically elect national officers communicate using digital technologies and ZPDWR plans to further upgrade internal and external communications. As Bojar et al (1998) point out, as industrial scale agri-food producers, ZPDWR is quick to adopt advanced technologies, including information and communications technologies (ICTs), including the systematic application of international foods standards.
Amongst ZPDWR members trust is developing with the success of the network, though competition with employers and landowners outside of the network remains intense.
4. Analysis
Purpose and goals
Of the four networks, WGRO SA’s heritage is post-Soviet era and although it enjoys some state aid, it is a for-profit company, the main stakeholder in which are SME suppliers (flowers, fruit and vegetables) and national and international purchasers. It is a market broker rapidly adopting new ways of working (in Schön’s [1963] phrase, the displacement of concepts) and associated technologies. ZPDWR too is an innovative rather than traditional network, formed in the post-Soviet era. It’s orientation is towards competitive international markets in which modernising technologies, communications and standards are qualifier conditions of entry. PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh are each traditional networks of SMEs seeking by innovation and networking to remain relevant and competitive in post-2004 Poland. Both retain strong dependency on the state, reflecting Soviet and pre-Soviet heritages.
Control/ownership
Though each of the four networks is privately owned; only WGRO SA was born outside of privatisation processes (though it is 44% owned by a Foundation and continues to receive some subsidy). Additionally, WGRO SA is the only one of the four with a private company manner of appointing managers (via Directors), in each of the others executive officers are periodically elected by members. Both PFHBiPM and PFHBiPM remain subject to state control (purchase of insemination plants, aid to address Pseudorabies). Post-privatisation, the big farmers and landowners network, ZPDWR is wholly independent of the state. Each of the other three networks have members who are small SMEs, in the main family businesses. Invariably, family businesses are risk-averse, having as a main goal the inter-generational passage of a life-style business. This makes receipt of external equity injections difficult and often problematises the giving of security for loans. Where producer networks are regionally-bases, risk aversion can be further heightened by the SMEs constituting an important part of the social fabric. Finally, PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh’s goals whilst acting as advocacy networks on behalf of SMEs also contain competition between SMEs. This internal competition is less apparent in the WGRO SA and ZPDWR networks. For all of these reasons, it appears the PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh are likely to progress much more slowly than WGRO SA and ZPDWR away from the tradition agri-food network model.
Governance and communications
PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh are relatively closed in terms of internal communications and internal governances. WGRO SA is more open in both internal governances and communications, yet perhaps not as open as ZPDWR to external communications. For example, when ZPDWR was approach by a US company looking for a supplier of piglets, CERPLON (one of its constituent companies) engaged the customer speedily and won the contract. It is not clear that the other
networks are as capable of actively listening to market signals, or operating with the close psychic distance (Brewer 2007) across international boundaries outside of the EU. WGRO SA too has examples of best practice, being based in the export-oriented Wielkopolska territory it has successfully engaged member companies to adopt HACCP standards.
Hierarchy and leadership
PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh retain the bottom-up voluntary organisation membership structures that fit uneasily with the qualifier conditions of major international agri-food customers. WGRO SA and ZPDWR have more recognisable leadership arrangements, yet only WGRO SA delivers a product (brokerage), ZPDWR remains an advocacy network, a looser association of larger and seemingly well-led companies.
Knowledge flows and functional integration
Globalising market relations in agri-food place a premium upon knowledge flows: identifying market need and delivering it. Market need is often expressed in terms of new processed foods and delivery in terms of food-to-fork quality associated with advanced levels of logistics. Whilst WGRO SA (and its partner organisation Poznan Guild), attempt to play a role in international research networks, they complain that external agencies and companies use them for piloting rather than research. The other three networks have no R&D capability. There are two routes to gaining the absorptive capacity necessary: sustained state investment in research institutes or large company sponsorship (Kinder and Lancaster 2001). If Poland is move up the international agri-food value chain, strengthening R&D absorptive capacity is essential. WGRO SA, PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh each offer practical services to their member firms, including knowledge distribution (as does ZPDWR) on technological advances in agri-food. Further research may reveal the diffusion of these technologies and what barriers exist to their adoption.
Product and process innovation
PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh promote agri-food (production and/or food processing) process innovations amongst their members whilst in addition to this WGRO SA and ZPDWR have helped product innovations. In the latter case the US piglets and ICTs are examples of product innovations. Perhaps, WGRO SA’s brokerage and associated online business model is the more radical innovation. Adoption of HCCAP and other international standards by WGRO SA and ZPDWR too are radical innovations in context and may eventually prove decisive to the future of Polish agri-foods.
Ecology
Vibrant networks feature and link with communities of practice – their structures demonstrate an ecology that easily transfers-in and generates relevant new practice. WGRO SA and ZPDWR appear more successful than PFHBiPM and PZHiPTCh in this, though PZHiPTCh has a systematic programme subsidising international business networking and training. The contradiction for Polish agri-food is that by time the self-confidence to internationally network in experimental communities of practice exists, many of the SMEs will have to bought over by foreign companies. It is likely that this process is inevitable, with only the most advanced indigenous successfully migrating into international markets. Whilst private banks (and even development agencies) can choose star performers and back them (and not others), this is more difficult for network organisations to do.
Trust, risk and sustainability
WGRO SA’s model appears to be engendering mutual trust amongst network members and syndicating risk across the network, whilst ZPDWR raison d'être is advocacy of its members interests against those outside of the network. Both networks appear sustainable, though how much WGRO SA can grow and how successful ZPDWR will be over the long-term remains to be seen. PZHiPTCh and PFHBiPM engender limited trust amongst their members since they compete for customers and network resources. Bio-security and market risk remain important considerations for small companies: the networks help risk assessment and addressing some bio-security risks, however market risk remains unsyndicated.
5. Conclusions
Polish economy and society are enjoying a la belle époque in the period before and following EU accession. Structural changes are evidence throughout. Yet, one in six employees rely upon agri-food for their prosperity, making the issues we have analysed greatly significant. This paper has examined four agri-food networks and concludes that two (PZHiPTCh and PFHBiPM) can be categorised as traditional, with some parameters modernising. The other two networks WGRO S.A. and ZPDWR are proving more capable of using advanced technologies and techniques to play a demand-led role in international markets. These two are both post-Soviet creations, the question is whether the Soviet and pre-Soviet agri-food networks are prisoners of a heritage denying them the possibility of migrating into innovative networks.
To some extent the experience of ZPDWR holds few lessons for PZHiPTCh and PFHBiPM, since it is a large business network. However, its preparedness to actively listen and conform with the exigencies of international markets (especially quality standards) and its adaptation of ICTs for internal and external communications are generic lessons for agri-food SMEs. Both PZHiPTCh and PFHBiPM are sufficiently large and resourced networks to emulate these characteristics of ZPDWR.
WGRO SA’s experiences in organisational change hold important lessons for PZHiPTCh and PFHBiPM. WGRO S.A. is effectively independent of the state and able to act as a for-profit company (electing Directors who appoint and appraise managers), for PZHiPTCh and PFHBiPM freeing up their leaders to act independent of the state is perhaps the most important challenge they face. Secondly, WGRO S.A. has an innovative business model that attracts international customers and reduces tensions and risk for its own members. PZHiPTCh and PFHBiPM too might explore a new model meeting these criteria.
Though the paper is able to provide examples of positive knowledge flows and ecologies resulting in both product and process innovations by ZPDWR and WGRO S.A., in both cases their fundamental knowledge relationships are dependent: they lack absorptive capacity and R&D capability to more effectively participate in the international networks creating the next generation of agri-food products. Thus for all four networks generating these competences and capabilities (by international partnering coupled to investment in R&D) appears a prerequisite to growth based on innovation.
In short, the prospects for Polish agri-food networks whilst originating in areas of physical endowment (Porter 1990) and defined in relation to global markets (Krugman 1991), face challenges of migrating their strategies and processes over which they have sufficient management control that success or failure can be ascribed to their own endogenous effort and is not dictated by determinist drivers or exogenous trends.
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Waldemar Bojar
waldemar.bojar@utp.edu.pl
Katedra Inynierii Zarzdzania, Wydział Zarzdzania Uniwersytet Technologiczno-Przyrodniczy w Bydgoszczy ul. Kaliskiego 7 bud. 3.1., 85-789 Bydgoszcz
Tony Kinder t.kinder@ed.ac.uk Management School University of Edinburgh
