Decision making and economic performance of flower producers

Within Dutch agriculture, greenhouse horticulture stands out as a growing and innovative sector. In such circumstances of growth and innovation, one would expect a fast development of management support systems. However, apart from climate control, the role of computerized support systems for management purposes (planning/evaluation) is still very limited. The purpose of this study is get insight into the decision-making processes of greenhouse growers. A group of 26 specialized, comparable chrysanthemum growers has been followed during a one-year period 1993/94. Interviews have been held and data have been collected on firm structure, sales, prices, price predictions, production planning, information use, computer use, et cetera. An additional workshop with growers has been held to simulate and analyse their cultivar choice and information search behaviour.

Firm efficiencies have been related to the quality of decision making by means of the stochastic production frontier approach. The results show statistically significant associations between some aspects of the decision-making and the efficiency of firms. Especially the aspects of data recording and evaluation are found to be of importance. With respect to the cultivar choice, simulated by means of an information display matrix, in a game environment, it turns out that fifty percent of the participants fail to detect their optimal choice, in a multi-attribute utility sense. Analysis of the information search behaviour suggests that decision making can be improved by increasing awareness of attributes and their relative importance.