Agriculture Organization Of The Generation, Evolution And Coordination Of The Interaction Mechanism

The development of agricultural organizations is an important realistic issue facing contemporary China. Since the adoption of household responsibility system, farm households have become the entities of agricultural production and operation. Such system fully motivates farmers' enthusiasm of production and ensures the basic food and clothing supply for the majority of farmers in China. However, such system arrangement also brings about a negative effect which exacerbates the conflicts between 'the small production and the big market' and consequently leads to the difficult sale of agricultural products and unchanging incomes despite of increasing yield. If farm households with independent production and separate operation cannot be organized effectively, it will be very difficult for farmers who have just shaken off poverty to get rich. The goal of 'building a well-off society in an all round way' will be just a slogan. History is giving the agricultural organizations a tough but sacred mission.Agricultural organization in China is also a significant theoretical issue. In the past two decades, the agricultural organizations in China have been developing at an amazing speed and in vast diversity, which is quite rare on the world stage. How to explain these organizational phenomena? How to guide the development and practices of these organizations? The reality has an urgent requirement for the theoretical explanation and guide. If theories can reveal the internal mechanism of the organizational development or conclude the rules of the organizational development, it will be a great contribution to the social sciences in the world. It's an exciting research program.In recent years, great progresses have been made in the theories of the agricultural organizations. Some research literature with important theoretical values is appearing. However, there're two academic phenomena need our attention and thinking: One is that most scholars only focus on the research of a certain type of agricultural organizations, trying to find out the best form of agricultural organizations. Is there a most ideal organizational form? Are different types of agricultural organizations in reality independent of each other or mutually related? The other is that most scholars study the agricultural organizations from the perspective of economics. Is agricultural organization merely an economic issue? Is efficiency the sole goal for all the organizations? Theorists need to make judgment on these questions because they will determine the further orientation in theoretical research. The paper points out that any organization has some limitations in its functions and some deficiencies in its institution. The integration and complementation of different types of organizations can fully exert the comprehensive effects of agricultural organizations and effectively solve various problems in the production and operation of agriculture in China. Therefore, the paper argues that the core of research on the agricultural organization issues should be the interactive mechanism within organizations rather than the single type of organizations, or the reasonable construction and effective distribution of organizational functions rather than the selection of the most ideal type of organizations. Meanwhile, agricultural organization is a complicated issue which involves factors of society, economy, culture, law, psychology and etc. We should break through the analysis based on the single perspective.However, theories of different disciplines have their own assumptions and analytical logics. It's impossible to completely integrate the theories of different disciplines. But we can compare different theories on the same platform and decide the best theory for explaining a certain organizational phenomenon, and find out the determinants of birth and evolution of organizations. On this basis new theories can be put forward to explain and analyze new phenomena of the agricultural organizations in China. To serve this goal, the theoretical explanation and comparative study are conducted in the paper.Chapter 2 'Historical Review of Organizational Theories: A Comparative Analysis of Three Theoretical Perspectives' reviews and summarizes the organizational theories from the perspective of economics, social sciences and management sciences. The vertical review and the horizontal comparison are to analyze their differences and discuss the possibilities of integrating them. The other objective of the analysis is to provide a brief theoretic framework for the subsequent research.Chapter 3 'Cause of Birth of Agricultural Organizations in China: A Comparative Analysis of Four Explanatory Logics on the Basis of Efficiency Mechanism" first reviews the development course and status quo of agricultural organizations in China to have an empirical study of organizational theories on efficiency mechanism and institutional perspective (Chapter 4). Then the paper compares and testifies the four explanation logics from the economic perspective on the same reality platform, namely, analysis logic of scale economy, analysis logic of transaction cost, analysis logic of labor-division economy and analysis logic of information processing to find out their explanation power. Although the analysis indicates that no single analysis logic can really explain the origin of agricultural organizations in China, it's significant to understand the important factors for the origin and evolution of organizations and the mechanism behind these factors.Chapter 4 'Explanation of Cause of Evolution of Agricultural Organizations in China: A Comparative Analysis of Four Analysis Methods based on Institutional Environment' introduces four theories from the institutional perspective, namely, theory of changes in new institutional economics, theory of institutional changes in Marxist economics, evolutional theory of organization ecology, and theory of evolutional economics. The comparison of the former two theories and the analysis of explanation of historical changes of agricultural organizations in China indicate that Chinese farmers have more characteristics as a 'social person'. It is also indicated that there're differences between institutions and organizations. It's not sufficient to explain the organization changes with the institutional theory alone. It's necessary to use the theories on organizational changes. The most important thing for analyzing the rule of organization changes is to break through the static analysis of economics and build a dynamic analysis model. In this aspect, the two evolutionary theories have provided many implications.A basic precondition for the research on the organizational changes and their interrelationships is to scientifically and rationally classify and define various forms of organizations. Chapter 5 'A Study of Classification and Orientation of Agricultural Organizations in China' introduces several major classification methods from economics and social sciences, and analyzes the classification and management of social organizations and theoretical classification of agricultural organizations in China. Based on the fact that most researchers confuse specialized cooperatives with the trade associations of agricultural products, the paper compares the differences between them from various perspectives and focuses on the orientation of the trade associations of agricultural products (role orientation, function orientation and target orientation).Based on the research of Chapters 3, 4 and 5, Chapter 6 'A Study of Coordination and Interaction Mechanism of Agricultural Organizations in China: A New Analytical Theoretical Framework for Transactional Cost' studies the changes of agricultural organizations and their interrelationship from the perspective of transaction cost. Transaction is used as an analytical tool for the research. This chapter reviews, compares and analyzes the major literature of Williamson who is a representative of transaction cost theory, and points out that the shortcomings and deficiencies in its five assumptions (limited rationality, opportunism, small-number transaction, asset specificity and uncertainty ) and analytical framework. Therefore they cannot explain the agricultural organizations in China. Based on the research conducted in the previous chapters and a deep analysis of internal and external determinants of organizations, the author puts forward a new dynamic theoretical analytical framework and builds an analytical model of coordination and interaction of agricultural organizations to analyze their development in China. The empirical study shows that the new theoretical analytical framework can explain the agricultural organizations better than that of Williamson.Foundation research is for the better understanding of the nature and operation of the organizations. And theories are used to solve realistic problems. According to the theories of organizational ecology, legitimacy is one of the most important factors for the effective development of organizations in their initial stages. Therefore, Chapter 7 'A Study of Legitimacy Crisis and Policies Facing China Agricultural Organizations: An Analysis based on the Legitimacy of Social Sciences' analyzes the institutional environment facing China's agricultural organizations from the perspective of legitimacy. The analysis indicates that the comparatively strong administrative legitimacy and governmental legitimacy are causes of fast development of agricultural organizations in China over the past 20 years. The barriers to the further development of agricultural organizations are lack of social legitimacy and law legitimacy. The author suggests that it should quicken the construction of mechanism redressing conflicts between regulations of various agricultural organizations as well as the construction of supervising systems of agricultural organizations.Chapter 8 'A Comparison of Development Models of Agricultural Organizations in the Developed Countries and Its Implication' compares and analyzes the development models of agricultural organizations in typical developed countries including the U.S.A., Germany and Japan. The research provides not only rich empirical experience for the theoretical research but also useful implications for the development of agricultural organizations in China.The final chapter, Chapter 9 'General Conclusions and Deficiencies' concludes and summarizes the results and views of the research, puts forward the corresponding policy suggestions, and points out the deficiencies and further orientation of the research.