关键词: 农民合作社, 理事长, 内部社会关系网络, 创新, 互联网

Abstract:     With the continuous development of new agricultural operator, the farmers′ cooperative has become an important force to promote agricultural development and increase farmers′ income. In the background of China′s agricultural modernization, farmers′ cooperatives need further innovation to play an important leading role in the process of achieving the organic connection between small farmers and modern agricultural development. So how can we promote the innovation of farmers′ cooperatives? The existing literature does not provide sufficient empirical evidence. The existing research on innovation mainly focuses on enterprises, but little attention is paid to the research on the innovation of farmers′ cooperatives.
    Among the factors that influence farmers′ cooperatives, we mainly concentrate on social network. The reason is that in the rural areas of China, informal systems such as social network lay the foundation for power operation and social system and affect resource allocation and knowledge creation. Therefore, this paper divides innovation into product innovation, technological innovation, management innovation and marketing innovation, and analyzes the relationship between the president′s social network and the innovation of farmers′ cooperatives from the theoretical and empirical perspectives.
   In theory, social networks are carriers of resources, and the information resources are required by economic organizations to carry out innovative activities, which are embedded in social networks. At the same time, social network can also promote resource sharing and disperse various risks in the innovation process of economic organizations to improve innovative efficiency. From the perspective of social network quality, tacit understanding, gift exchange and grace in social network are the key elements of individual information resource sharing. Typically, high levels of trust lead to high value resource exchanges. Thus, it can be seen that the quality of social network represented by trust can promote resource sharing and thus promote the innovation of farmer cooperatives. From the perspective of heterogeneity of social networks, by occupying the middle position across the structural hole in the network, diversified non-redundant information and knowledge can be obtained, and the integration of such heterogeneous knowledge can improve the innovation efficiency. Therefore, this paper holds that the quality and heterogeneity of presidents′ social network can promote the innovation of farmer cooperatives.
   This paper analyzes the impact of the president′s social network on the innovation of farmers′ cooperatives by using the survey data of planting farmers′ cooperatives in Sichuan province. We find that the quality and heterogeneity of presidents′ social network have significant positive effects on product innovation, technology innovation, management innovation and marketing innovation. Considering the endogeneity problem, we make use of the “control function approach” to test the robustness, and the results show that the hypothetical test results are robust. In the further study, we considered the moderating effect of internet application between the social network and the innovation of farmers′ cooperatives. The results showed that, the internal social network quality of the presidents makes a greater impact on management innovation and marketing innovation in internet-based farmers′ cooperatives than those who bring no internet.
   The contribution of this paper is reflected in the following three aspects. Firstly, the research conclusion of this paper is helpful for people to deeply understand the impact of social network on the innovation and transformation of new agricultural operators, and provides empirical evidence for the government to formulate relevant policies to promote the innovation of farmers′ cooperatives. Secondly, this paper divides the innovation behavior into product innovation, technology innovation, management innovation and marketing innovation, and examines the influence of the quality and heterogeneity of social network on these four innovation activities respectively, which is helpful to enrich the literature related to economic organizations. Finally, the existing research mainly focuses on enterprises. This paper extends the research object to farmers′ cooperatives, thus broadening the research perspective of innovation.

Key words: farmers′ cooperative, president, internal social network, innovation, internet