Intergenerational family farm leadership, organizational innovativeness, and resiliency

Family farms are central to the American agricultural economy and vital inputs to the prosperity and sustainably of rural communities. Yet, the resiliency of these farms is threatened by uncertainties associated with intergenerational leadership succession. The current study used a set of theoretical constructs from Rogers’s (2003) Innovation Diffusion Model (centralization, formalization, interconnectedness, organizational slack, size) to guide a qualitative exploration of the implications of intergenerational leadership dynamics on the organizational innovativeness of six family farms in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Three themes emerged across all six farms that bring nuance and complexity to the understanding of organizational innovativeness and intergenerational leadership dynamics within family farms. The themes together reveal the importance of routine ingenuity, the honoring of legacy, and conservative innovation on the longer-term resiliency of intergenerational family farms and the community systems in which they are positioned.