An Egocentric Network Analysis Investigating Female Farm Bureau Leaders' Crisis Leadership Diffusion and Food Waste Behavior

Abstract

COVID-19, the most recent multi-dimensional global crisis, challenged leadership and impacted individuals’ personal networks. Researchers chose to conduct a study that assessed the personal advice networks of women leading in agriculture. This was achieved through disseminating two cross-sectional surveys to women involved in their states women’s leadership committee. The role of women leading in agriculture in alleviating food waste impacts and food insecurity is not widely known or acknowledged. An egocentric network analysis was chosen as the methodology in order to better understand personal advice network characteristics, examine the networks impact on Farm Bureau Women’s Leadership Committee members food waste behavior, and to determine the networks’ relation to women’s opinion and crisis leadership during COVID-19. Researchers found that women’s advice networks are composed majorly of family members or friends, people they have known for more than five years, and people they communicate with weekly. The dependent variables used to run multiple linear regression in R were ego food waste behavior, ego opinion leadership, and ego crisis leadership. The independent variables within these models included crisis leadership sum score, structural holes effective size, heterogeneity of alter trusts ego, heterogeneity of egos lead alter toward positive food waste, heterogeneity of alter describe ego opinion leader, opinion leadership sum score, proportion of the network that ego lead alter toward positive food waste “always,” proportion of network that was female, proportion of network the ego has known five or more years, proportion of network alter trusts ego “always,” proportion of the network that ego communicates with weekly plus, proportion of network that are Farm Bureau members, ego baby boomer, ego white or Caucasian, ego millennial, and ego generation. Networks consisting of both strong and weak ties have a better advantage in the workplace and create a more well-rounded individual, opposed to those whose networks consist of majorly strong ties. It cannot be overstated that there is a strong need for developing current and future women agricultural leaders across the globe in order to achieve food security and minimize food waste impacts.