Supply Chain Management

Absolute and Comparative Competitiveness of Governing Structures: The Case of Bulgarian Agriculture

Article Details

Pub. Date	: June 2023
Product Name	: The IUP Journal of Supply Chain Management
Product Type	: Article
Product Code	: IJSCM030623
Author Name	: Hrabrin Bachev
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Strategic
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 30

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Abstract

The paper incorporates the achievements of interdisciplinary New Institutional Economics, suggests a holistic multi-pillar framework for assessment of the competitiveness of governing structures of farming activity, and assesses the absolute and comparative competitiveness of Bulgarian farming enterprises of different juridical types, economic sizes, product specializations, and ecological and geographical locations. Farm competitiveness is defined as the capability of an agricultural holding to maintain sustainable competitive positions in certain markets, leading to high economic performance through continuous improvement and adaptation to changing market, natural, and institutional environments. The main "pillars" of farm competitiveness are economic efficiency, financial endowment, adaptability, and sustainability. For assessing the level of competitiveness of Bulgarian farms, a holistic system of 4 criteria for each pillar and 17 particulars and 5 integral indicators is used. The study has found that the level of competitiveness of agricultural holdings in the country is at a good level, but there is significant differentiation in the level and factors of competitiveness of holdings with different juridical types, sizes, product specializations, ecological and geographical locations. The low adaptive potential and economic efficiency contribute to the greatest extent to lowering the competitiveness of Bulgarian agricultural producers. Especially critical for maintaining the competitive positions of farms are their low productivity, income, financial security, and adaptability to changes in the natural environment, in which directions the public support of farms and their management strategies for development should be directed. A large share of farms of different types has a low level of competitiveness, and if measures are not taken in due time to increase competitiveness by improving the management and restructuring of farms, adequate state support, etc., a large part of Bulgarian farms will cease to exist in the near future.

Introduction

The issues of proper evaluation of the levels and factors of competitiveness of major governing structures of farming activities have been among the most topical, both in academic and practical (forwarded toward farms management and agrarian policies) terms (Wisenthige and Guoping, 2016; Dresch et al., 2018; Falciola and Rollo, 2020; and Westeren et al., 2020). Around the globe, there have been numerous publications on the competitiveness of farms of different sizes (Latruffe, 2010 and 2013; Lundy et al., 2010; Mmari, 2015; Berti and Mulligan, 2016; Koteva, 2016; Ngenoh et al., 2019; Orlowska, 2019;

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