In recent years, the management of Japanese agriculture has been changing, and a situation that can be called the “organizational era” is on the horizon. In an agricultural corporation, in addition to the workplace atmosphere and teamwork, high–quality interactions between organizational members, such as analyses of the work consciousness of the individuals who make up the organization, and human resource development, are critical to the formation of an organizational culture. In this paper, organizational culture is regarded as a catalyst for agricultural management to conduct strategies using a management philosophy. Further, I have explained the contents of such a culture’s catalytic function and quantitatively analyzed the influence of organizational culture factors on team performance. The following three issues have been specifically addressed in this paper.

First, I have examined the theoretical and conceptual structure of the effects of the existence of organizational culture when an agricultural corporation intends to change organizational structure

through the execution of management strategies and the practice of management innovation. Second, I have organized the factors necessary for a comprehensive understanding of organizational culture.

Specifically, I have classified organizational culture into internal structural factors and corresponding external regional factors. Additionally, for the internal structural factors, I have presented a group of survey items that systematically explain the organizational culture using behavioral science. Third, to demonstrate these factors, I conducted a questionnaire survey targeting agricultural corporations and ran a quantitative analysis of organizational culture constituent factors. I analyzed the characteristics of the distribution of scores of organizational culture factors according to the characteristics of the company and department, and conducted a quantitative analysis on the effect of organizational culture on team performance.

While the overall number of farms in our country has been decreasing, the number of corporate farms has been increasing annually, and their average scale has been expanding. Though the number of farms employing non–family members has increased in recent years, the concepts of management strategy, human resource management, and organizational culture in farm management have not been widely disseminated. In the field of agricultural management, there is little accumulated research that comprehensively analyzes the implementation of these concepts.

Large–scale pig farming corporations, which are the subject of this study, differ from agricultural corporations engaged in other types of animal husbandry and crop production. For example, most workers in such pig–farming corporations are hired as full–time employees, and all the employees are integrated into a hierarchical organization. Most of them are from non–farming backgrounds and do not intend to leave the company to run their own farming business; moreover they tend to be highly committed toward their positions.

Large–scale pig farming corporations are rapidly expanding and diversifying their operations, thereby increasing the workforce they employ. Therefore, it is important to analyze the relationship between strategic human resource management and organizational culture in such corporations, and to consider its impact on their business performance. We hypothesize that maintaining a close relationship between strategic human resource management and organizational culture leads to an improvement in corporate performance and gives agricultural organizations a sustainable competitive advantage, and examine the example of corporation A on this basis.

The research method consisted of a questionnaire survey of the full–time employees of corporation A and a survey of management performance of the company. The items on the questionnaire for employees were interest in management philosophy, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The results of the survey revealed that management philosophy was becoming more widespread among employees, and that the company was making progress in fostering an organizational culture that emphasized human resource development and the improvement of individual skills. The organizational culture of “contributing to the community” was also endorsed by the employees.

In studying the corporation’s performance, since 2017, it was found that the output had increased, while the total number of hours worked had decreased. This result was attributed to the fact that the improvement in the employees’ working conditions increased their satisfaction and willingness to enhance their performance at work.

Currently, not many agricultural corporations show much interest in human resource management and organizational culture. Organizational culture is defined as a collection of values, codes of conduct, and beliefs shared by the members of an organization; according to previous research, it is not under the direct control of the management. However, it is possible for the management to encourage employees to cultivate a desirable organizational culture by clearly presenting the company’s management philosophy and action guidelines. Appropriate encouragement by management is expected to increase organizational commitment and motivation among employees, which will have a positive impact on business performance.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the organizational culture and management strategy of community–based farming corporations (CBFCs) consisting of farmers of one or more settlements. Our five main analytical perspectives are as follows : (1) In the management of CBFCs and regional individuality, the communal functions are engaged in the mutual regulation of organizational culture and regional individuality, and various dualities, such as rural logic and business logic, are involved ; (2) a duality exists from the level of individuals to the level of local communities, and it is expected that this duality will occur and change according to the formation of organizational culture ; (3) in the organization and incorporation processes, various types of feedback, such as transitions from voluntary organization to corporation, mergers, and the establishment of region–wide cooperative corporation, can be found ; (4) various organizational cultures and regional individualities are assumed according to the organizational form ; (5) organizational activities of CBFCs consist of profit–making types and community–contribution types, and the larger the overlap is between the two types, the more desirable it is for business permanence and stability.

This paper illuminates the organizational culture nurtured in Kitanaka Farm, a farming corporation in Yasu, Shiga Prefecture. Kitanaka Farm, a renowned grower of cucumbers, has developed a highly inclusive working environment where the diversity of employees, along with their needs and aspirations, is appreciated. The company’s purpose is to make the employees’dreams come true rather than to improve productivity or maximize profit. Our aim is to unpack and analyze this unique company culture through the lens of Teal Theory, an evolutionary perspective garnering attention in recent organizational theories and management studies. A Teal organization, the most recent organizational model in human history, possesses three major features : 1) “self–management,” or autonomous actions by employees themselves (rather than the top management) to steer organizational decision making, 2) “wholeness,” or the exposure of employee’s full personalities (rather than characters bound only by their roles), and 3) “evolutionary purpose,” or the organization’s purpose that guides its life and actions. It is postulated that some of a Teal organization’s features are exhibited in Kitanaka Farm, where employees have demonstrated autonomous actions for self–management. Both in–depth interviews and informal conversations with employees, along with participant observation, were employed to collect qualitative data. The results demonstrate that while what the ideal Kitanaka employee, the president, embraces has much to do with the current corporate working environment, that does not mean that he can manipulate the corporate culture as he wishes. Instead, his ideas have been reflectively affected by other employees and the corporate atmosphere they have created. Arguably, this indicates the impossibility of a single person directly maneuvering a corporate culture, even if (s) he is the leader. The employees, meanwhile, have developed a self－management scheme that accommodates their varying interests and concerns. Making the desires and dreams embraced by the employees, including the part–time staff members who have children to care for, full–time employees who wish to become independent farmers, and foreign apprentices who want to earn as much money as possible to send it back home to their families back, come true is the priority of the corporation. These findings are examples of the traits of a Teal Organization as reflected in Kitanaka Farm’s management. This paper concludes, first, that, as shown above, in the Kitanaka corporation, the president’s philosophy and the corporate operation reflect features of a Teal organization. Second, the “materiality” of farming as such is an important factor enabling an inclusive culture that accommodates diverse individuals with varying interests. Third, Kitanaka Farm’s underlying assumption, the most foundational aspect of the organizational culture, seems to reside with the very weak “going concern,” namely, interest in sustaining the company. What is at stake for Kitanaka Farm in turn lies in its “purpose concern,” that is, its mission to build a platform that helps its employees fulfill their dreams.