Approach and research questions

The core issues in the main stage concerned the assessment and development of entrepreneurial skills. In methodological terms these issues were approached by utilising rhetorical and relational social psychology (Billig 1996; Goffman 1959; Vesala & Rantanen 2007; for a more detailed description, see Vesala 2008)). This meant that entrepreneurial skills were viewed through the self-assessments displayed in farmers’ self-presentations; the development of these skills was studied by analysing how farmers explain the presence or absence of these skills among farmers. Consequently, the research questions were formulated as follows.

1. How do the farmers present themselves in relation to entrepreneurial skills?

2. How do these skills manifest in their self-presentations?

3. Are there differences between self-presentations according to the farmers’ engagement in conventional production, value adding activities or other diversified business activities?

4. How do the farmers explain the development of entrepreneurial skills among farmers?

5. In the farmers’ opinion, what could be done to develop entrepreneurial skills among farmers?

6. Do the explanations presented by the farmers match the vieWork package oints of outside experts?

7. Country differences and similarities, concerning the results from questions 1-5. Questions 1-3 deal with the assessment of farmers’ entrepreneurial skills, questions 4-5 deal with the factors hindering and/or stimulating the development of entrepreneurial skills, and the last two deal with a wider comparative aspect.

Methods

In the main stage, three distinct methods were utilised in combination. The most prominent and crucial one was comprised of qualitative interviews.

Interviews were conducted in the UK, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland, on 25 farms in each country. In connection with the qualitative interviews, a structured questionnaire was also utilised to collect background information about the interviewees, their farms and business activities. The interviews occurred on the case farms, which were selected from chosen localities or regions. In each country, the selection of the case farms was such that a minimum of five female interviewees were included in the sample. Additionally, a maximum of five interviewees over the age of 55 were included to ensure that the cases would have future relevance, in a sense that one could assume most of the farms to be still active for several years. Further, the selection was constructed so that the case farms would include variations typical of the area or region in question in terms of line of production.

Most importantly, however, the selection in each country was such that representatives of three strategic orientations – conventional production, value adding and non-food diversification – were included. Consequently, the case farms were divided into three subgroups for the analysis. It was assumed that these subgroups represent the elementary strategic alternatives in farm business nowadays, and that this would contribute to the theoretical relevance of the whole study and the research questions put forward in it.

In the design of the qualitative interviews, a particular methodological approach was utilised. Following the basic methodological outline proposed by Vesala (1996) and Vesala and Rantanen (2007) in their ‘qualitative attitude approach’, a design was constructed in which interview data was generated by encouraging talk within a semi-structured interview session; the talk was then analysed as social psychologically embedded argumentative rhetoric. In the concrete interview situations this was achieved by presenting the interview topics to the interviewees, both verbally and written on separate sheets of paper, and by asking the interviewees to comment on the topics in their own words. The topics were introduced to the interviewees in the form of questions and requests, some of which concerned the assessment of the interviewees’ own skills, while the others concerned the development of entrepreneurial skills among farmers. The initial comments of the interviewee were followed by a short conversation, where the interviewer encouraged the interviewee to elaborate on their initial statement and to present justifications for their opinion. During the conversation the interviewers refrained from taking a stance on the issues under discussion. In order to achieve comparability between individual interviews across all countries, a relatively uniform way of conducting the interviews was pursued with the help of detailed interview instructions.

For the analysis, the interviews were transcribed verbatim. In the analysis, the concept of selfpresentation figured as a crucial interpretive tool for studying the assessment of skills. Self-assessments were analytically approached through interpreting the interview talk as self-presentations in regard to these entrepreneurial skills. The interpretation focused,, firstly on a gradation of how skilful the interviewees presented themselves to be, and on the credibility of the presentation, based on their quality. Secondly, the interpretation focused on the content of the presentation, on how the skills were manifested in it, i.e. what sort of activities and tasks are performed, and how they are performed when these skills are applied, according to the presentations.

The key assumption concerning the study of factors that effect the development of entrepreneurial skills was that this can be done by analysing how farmers explain the phenomenon. Thus, these factors, processes and their contribution to the development of entrepreneurial skills were identified by analysing to what kind of factors, actors or processes the farmers attributed the cause of or responsibility for skill development and its outcomes. These factors were categorised as internal or external to the individual farmer, and were viewed from the perspective of a positive-negative dimension (hindering or enhancing the development of skills).

The interviews were conducted in each country in the respective native language, and the analysis was done independently by the researchers in each partner country according to the instructions provided by the partner responsible for the main stage.

Because of the qualitative nature of the study, including the case study design, it is obvious that the results concern immediately only these case farms, and generalisations of a statistical nature, for example, will not be attempted. However, it may be assumed that theoretical generalisations are feasible, based on the notion that the results inform us about the possible state of affairs among farmers. Such theoretical conclusions, of course, call for consideration of specific features of the case farms and their selection. For example, in Poland the case farms were deliberately selected in such a way that the size of the farms was bigger than the Polish average; however, in this way a better comparability of the Polish sample with the other five European countries was achieved.

To supplement the qualitative interviews, additional survey data was generated in Finland in connection with another research project1 . In this nationwide postal questionnaire study a total of 751 responses were received from conventional farmers, farmers with business diversification and other rural small business owners. The questions concerned self-assessment of entrepreneurial skills and the perceived importance of such skills. The variables based on these questions were also analysed in relation to some other variables describing the farmer and the farm/firm. The primary purpose of including this additional data in the study was to explore the validity of the entrepreneurial skill concept in the farm context in statistical terms.

Finally, in order to assess the possible fit between the views of the interviewed farmers and those of various experts and stakeholders involved in farm related affairs, a series of workshops for experts was arranged in the partner countries. Relevant experts from the region or locality where the interviews were made were invited to the workshop in each country. The experts were introduced to the assumptions and results of the main stage and asked to comment on them from their own point of view. The comments were recorded and then analysed by the researchers in each country, in order to detect the fit between the views.