Agribusiness and Territorial Government: Community Citizenship from Social Responsibility Perspective

Abstract

Continuously changing networked society chiefly takes more active role in ongoing transformations worldwide. Governments are dealing with numerous organized groups which arise from seemingly nowhere with particular set of requirements to make social change. In a globalized world quickly moving information flows, expanded physical mobility of people formed a new society with increased demand for better life, which cannot be emphasized without greater social responsibility of every actor in society. And this cannot be minded out, since modern society holds crucially powerful tools, such as media and internet, to fight for justice, values, and believes.

Territorial governments, even in most distanced regions, start facing similar challenges as those in crowded cities due to the call from society for greater social responsibility. Only set of stakeholders insignificantly vary in countryside compared to cities when calling for social change; however, the general body consists of variety actions to live better in a socially responsible way. Lately, farmers in countryside as well as local governments, even in post-soviet countries, are more frequently requested to mind the principles of social responsibility from the general public. Scientific literature proposes that it signalizes about the shift from industrial to postindustrial stage of development—knowledge and information age. However, any scientific evidence to disclose the factors that influence farmer's choice to act as a community citizen had not been provided yet. Authors presuppose that particular farmer's background characteristics, such as age, generation, education, or others, might be among the factors that highly shape the way farmers act with local communities as well as territorial governments from social responsibility perspective.

The main aim of this article is to disclose the factors that define social responsibility of agribusiness in their attitudes toward territorial government and local community.

Scientific literature analysis and generalization, survey, interview, and descriptive statistical analysis methods were applied. Data were collected in spring 2017 and autumn 2018 in Lithuanian farms. Research results helped disclose that age, generation, and education are among important factors in changing social responsibility attitudes of agribusiness. Significant dependency was observed among age and most of agribusiness representatives' social responsibility counterparts when dealing with territorial government and local community development.

Citation

Vilkė, R. and Gedminaitė – Raudonė, Ž. (2020), "Agribusiness and Territorial Government: Community Citizenship from Social Responsibility Perspective", Crowther, D. and Seifi, S. (Ed.) Governance and Sustainability (Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 73-90. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2043-052320200000015005