Collective action and innovation in rural areas: an efficient dialogue. A case study of Greece

Resumen

According to some theories (Putnam 1993; Williams 1998) external risks incentivize small businesses to seek cooperation and synergies with one another in order to cope with those risks and improve their position. It is argued that social capital is a necessary condition for the organisation of collective action (Kazakos, 2006; Bianchi, 2001), and that existing social networks (that are closely linked to social capital) promote this evolution and facilitate these new synergies. However, in the case of Greek agriculture, even where the above conditions are present, no such evolution is observed.
In order to explain the hesitation of Greek farmers to co-operate and to investigate further farmers’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship through the creation of collective socio-professional associations, we carried out a research among 110 farmers, in the prefecture of Kilkis in the North of Greece through questionnaires and personal interviews. In parallel, we studied two forms of collective actions where producers of the prefecture are involved in order to answer the question of whether it is the need for innovation that leads producers to collective actions or the other way round. The central conclusion of the field research is that causality can operate in both directions if there is a broker who is strong enough to mobilize the producers.