Improving Farm Cooperatives’ Performance and Sustainability: A Study of Agricultural Managers’ Competencies Based on the Grounded Theory and the fsQCA Methods

As an effective talent selection and performance management method in enterprises, can the competency model also play an essential role in farm cooperatives? Limited research currently focuses on improving farm cooperatives’ performance through agricultural managers’ competency. Our study takes the initiative to create the “agricultural manager competency model,” which includes five competency dimensions: knowledge and technology, personal capabilities, career orientation, personality traits, and intrinsic drive. On this basis, the multiple competencies are analyzed by the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis(fsQCA). We found that agricultural managers improve the performance of farm cooperatives. There are four paths to generate high performance, which summarize three types of agricultural managers: technical career, managerial career, and integrated entrepreneurial.