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The aim of this study is to estimate the technical efficiency of the massive and economically important crop of rice in Ecuador, and then conduct a comparison between groups of farmers with and without insurance.

The authors use an input-oriented data envelopment analysis approach (DEA) to estimate technical efficiency scores. The DEA is combined with the double bootstrap approach in Simar and Wilson (2007) to study factors that may affect technical efficiency. This method overcomes the traditional two-stage DEA approach frequently used in the efficiency literature. The authors thus research the role of insurance on rice efficiency production using this technique and sizeable field-level survey data from 376 rice farmers distributed in five provinces during the 2019 winter cycle in Ecuador.

Most uninsured rice farmers operate with increasing returns to scale, which means that farms improve their resource use efficiency by increasing their size. However, since scale efficiencies are relatively high, it appears that inefficiencies are explained by inadequate input use. Also, the authors find evidence that insured farmers have a negative relationship with technical efficiency in rice production. In other results, when exploring the influence of additional variables on efficiency, the authors find that parameters related to transplanting, high education, farm size and some locations are positive and statistically significant.

The results of this work are relevant for policymakers interested in evaluating technology performance, risk management instruments and farm efficiency in an industry in a developing country such as rice production in Ecuador.

This paper is the first attempt to estimate farm-level technical efficiency employing the double bootstrap approach to assess the efficiency and its determinants of Ecuadorian rice producers.

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine whether environmental turbulence leads to the adoption of high-performance work systems (HPWS) and learning orientation (LO) in organizations and, if so, how these two elements contribute to innovativeness. Past research studies widely demonstrated that HPWS and LO are strong determinants of innovativeness. This study incorporates environmental turbulence as an antecedent and explains the interactions between these concepts.

This paper involves a questionnaire-based survey of 233 firms. For hypothesis testing, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used.

The results revealed the antecedent role of environmental turbulence in HPWS and LO. Additionally, HPWS and LO mediated the relationship between environmental turbulence and organizational innovativeness.

This research has the limitations of a cross-sectional study design. The study draws out some implications for firms facing turbulent conditions and intending to increase their innovativeness by stimulating a learning culture and focusing on human capital through HPWS.

The overarching contribution of this study is to test the assumption that organizations initiate changes in their internal systems as a response to environmental turbulence. By doing so, the study enriches current studies by exploring the mediator role of HPWS and LO between environmental turbulence and innovativeness. This research also contributes to the literature by demonstrating the antecedent role of environmental turbulence in HPWS for the first time. Additionally, it provides evidence for the relationship between environmental turbulence and LO.