Authors: MForbord;
This thesis in business administration at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) deals with a certain resource, goat milk. How this resource was used in Norway in the 1980s and how this use changed in the 1990s is described through some more or less interconnected case stories. The Industrial network approach is applied in order to understand this use and change. The interaction taking place between various actors in a certain industrial network, ‘The Norwegian milk network’, is emphasized. This interaction affected the resource and resources it was tied to. More specifically, over time various resources had been mutually adapted across organizational borders in order to facilitate certain economic uses. The actors in the network undoubtedly judged use of cow milk, a much ‘bigger’ resource in the network in terms of physical and economic volume, as most important in the 1980s. This had the effect that the various resources in the network were adapted primarily for the utilization of this resource (product), while goat milk was handled more or less as a residue. However, in the 1990s, driven by some enthusiastic and critical actors, among them a goat farm couple, a series of interactions took place in the network. This led to a new view of how goat milk could economically be used. Gradually a number of small changes were made in the way resources were combined. This facilitated new and ‘improved’ uses of the goat milk, not at least in the form of new white goat cheeses.
Hence we can say that in the network, over the period of two decades which we study, goat milk changed from a ‘cost’ to a ‘value.’ It is argued that this change is difficult to explain and understand unless one takes interaction and (industrial) networks into consideration.
The thesis was made at the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, NTNU and was financed by Interreg II and III Sweden – Norway (1998-2003).
Keywords: Agricultural resources; new economic uses; industrial network
A more refined download of the thesis can be done at the NTNU Library at:
http://publications.uu.se/ntnu/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=37
The thesis can be ordered as printed Report no. 05/03 from:
Centre for Rural Research, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, N-7491 Trondheim; Tel. +47 7359 1729; E-mail: post@bygdeforskning.no
Publish Year: 2003