Purpose – The paper contributes to the debate about local food and conceptualization of ruralentrepreneurship by analysing the performance of small-scale dairies departing from their relation toinnovations, innovative activities and risk.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors use phenomenography to identify representative categories,and to draw conclusions about how these are consistent or different from dominant definitions of ruralentrepreneurship and self-employment. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews, participatoryworkshops and compiled a database of all small-scale dairies established between 1968 and 2020.

Findings – A focus on innovations contributes to differentiate between rural entrepreneurship and selfemployment and how these interact in the process of economic growth. Innovations are seldom disruptive.Instead, innovative behaviour is strongly related to business models and to imitation. Social capital andcollective action play a key role for the innovative capacity of small businesses, especially to realize disruptiveinnovations, such as the establishment of a new market.Research

limitations/implications – The innovative capacity of rural businesses can be understoodthrough their ability to break patterns, alter institutions and turn embededdness into assets. Rural entrepreneurship and self-employment are intertwined in the economic growth process.

Practical implications – Innovative behaviour is a significant aspect for firm survival over time, and it isalso strongly related to new business models. Most rural firms can be characterized as self-employment, thelatter are essential because they provide rural livelihoods and help bring maturity to newly establishedmarkets.

Social implications – The right type of support, e.g. adopting enabling industrial regulations and grantingaccess to constructive experiences of others, contributes to the innovative behaviour of small-scale rural firms.

Originality/value – This study differentiates rural entrepreneurship from rural self-employment byanalysing the role of innovation. The authors show how innovations and innovative behaviour work their waythrough the process of economic growth and how innovation can break patterns by turning ruralembeddedness into assets; and how innovative behaviour related to self-employments contributes to thecreation of value and interacts with entrepreneurship in the process of economic growth.

This article highlights the development of modern food practices and food regulations in Sweden with special emphasis on food safety and food security from the late 19th century to 1950s. The results are linked to the wider discussion about modernization and societal change in Sweden and includes industrial organization in the agro-food sector, technological development, and the reality experienced by the population during decades that were heavily influenced by the consequences of two world wars and the rise of the welfare state. 

The two topics highlighted in this volume, entrepreneurship and co-operatives, and education within these fields, may be regarded as essentially disparate themes. However, looking more closely it is apparent that these have some interesting intersections. The main focus relates to innovation and entrepreneurship among co-operatives, the public sector, and the private sector

This work is a product of the collaboration between Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden, and Moshi Co-operative University in Moshi, Tanzania. In both countries we aim to understand, how enterprises with different ownership forms and other kinds of state and private organizations contribute to economic growth or decline. The volume is an overview of research about entrepreneurship and co-operatives but also of education in these areas. The intention is to contribute to the promotion of research on these topics in both countries and enhance future collaboration between the two Universities.

This chapter studies the internationalization of the Swedish–Danish dairy corporation Arla. During a period of 100 years the dairy sector went from being at the focus of national and regional interest, the industry has become global. In some geographical markets, or in particular market areas, these transnationals – corporations as well as cooperatives – may compete fiercely, and their growth strategy is often to merge with or acquire local producers. However, these multinational firms also actively cooperate in other areas (e.g. in branding or distribution) or on other geographical markets. This may take the form of strategic alliances, such as joint ventures. Thus, coopetition – cooperation and competition – has been a common recent strategy. In the case at focus in this study, Arla Foods a.m.b.a. mergers are conducted with cooperatives in European countries, while businesses that are located further away are taken care of through exports and joint ventures. The main contribution of this article is that it employs internationalization theory and places the globalization of cooperatives in the middle of the academic discussion about internationalization. A recommendation for further studies is to both dig deeper into the changing nature of cooperatives historically, but also to look closer at the strategic deals that global expansion of cooperatives is based on. 

This chapter analyses the long term transformation of the dairy industry in Sweden from its establishement in the early 20th Century until 2015. The emphasis of the study was put on the the underlying causes behind the process of collectivisation and de-collectivisation and how such structural industrial transformation was fueled by an interaction between crisis and structural change.  Theoretically the article uses concepts and approaches development by the French annales school and by institutional theory. By adding the process of de-collectivisation to the analysis, this chapter offers a previously unknown view of the long term industrial development and transformation in Sweden and sheds light on societal change from an industrialising society to a post-industrial society.

The chapter discusses the emergence, development and fall of the Swedish reinsurance industry in the non-life sector. The focus is on major events that changed the circumstances and conditions for conducting reinsurance and how the business was organized. The reinsurance business became an important part of expanding on foreign markets during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite improved international circumstances during the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, the domestic market became increasingly important for almost every Swedish insurer. Shortage of venture capital, fierce competition and severe losses made the wisdom of retaining worldwide operations doubtful. In addition, the deregulated Swedish financial market made it more urgent than ever to consolidate positions in the domestic market, and the international reinsurance operations were entirely dismantled after one and half centuries.

Wine constitutes a corner-stone in the past and present of Armenian and Georgian societies. During the Soviet era, the production, distribution and consumtion of agro-food products, including wine, became elements in the geopolitical organization of food and agri-cultural relations of the USSR and of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Reconstruction (after 1965). The Armenian wine industry was restructured and its main focus became the production of sherry, while the Georgian wine industry focused on wine production, most of which was exported to Russia. The wine sector became re-structured, vineyards were collectivized and their management was centralized and a far reaching division of labour was implemented at industry level. This article offers a glimpse of the economic history of wine in Armenia and Georgia between the 1920’s and 1991.