Business organization and coordination in marketing specialty hogs: A comparative analysis of two firms from Iowa

We study business organization and coordination of specialty-market hog production using a comparative analysis of two Iowa pork niche-marketing firms. We describe and analyze each firm's management of five key organizational challenges: planning and logistics, quality assurance, process verification and management of "credence attributes," business structure, and profit sharing. Although each firm is engaged in essentially the same activity, there are substantial differences across the two firms in the way production and marketing are coordinated. These differences are partly explained by the relative size and age of each firm, thus highlighting the importance of organizational evolution in agricultural markets, but also are partly the result of a formal organizational separation between marketing and production activities in one of the firms.

Brent Hueth
Economics Department - Iowa State University
Phone: 515.294.1085
Email: bhueth@iastate.edu

Maro Ibarburu
Economics Department - Iowa State University
Phone: 515.294.1350
Email: maro@iastate.edu

James Kliebenstein
Economics Department - Iowa State University
Phone: 515.294.7111
Email: jklieben@iastate.edu