Magnar Benjaminson, a Masters student from the Department of Administration and Organisation theory at the University of Bergen, Norway has taken note of the activities of the Finfish.org community and has sought your help. He is seeking to gain a better understanding of learning processes in aquaculture and explains his field of study below….
Norwegian salmon farming has a very long and troublesome history. The commercial part of this history is not very long though. Commercial salmon, and trout, farming in Norway before the 1960-70s had more the character of a hobby than of a commercial branch. But since then, Norwegian salmon farming has grown and become the largest and most significant national salmon producing branches of the World. The way to success was mainly build by a number of stubborn, hardworking and adventurous entrepreneurs. This is at least the way history will see it, but it is a fact that the success would be almost impossible without them.
These entrepreneurs had some things in common, besides the personal abilities I mentioned before. They were always experimenting with new production constructions, locations, types of food, etc. The result was a lot of failures, but also some significant cases of success. The innovations made by these entrepreneurs have been vital for salmon farming to become a Industry. And behind these innovations, there has been a lot of learning.
In Norway innovation has become a must for most companies, including the companies in the salmon farming branch. But there is less fuzz about the underlying processes of innovation; learning. As far as I can see there has been no research on this subject in this branch, a branch which was build up by these processes. I found out that someone has to find out whether learning has been totally neglected in this branch, or if it’s just not very much attention on the subject.
My thesis will try to recover learning processes in one of the leading farmed salmon suppliers in Norway, Bremnes Seashore. My main research issues are 1) the processes attached to acquiring new technology(or knowledge), 2) the learning processes taking place inside the organization and 3) how cooperation with/relations to other companies can result in learning processes. In addition to these questions I will focus on which level is engaged in the learning processes, the continuity of these processes and comparison over time(5 years or so).
I’m in a early stage of my work and I’m very happy if anyone is interested in commenting or giving me some feedback on this.
Magnar may be reached via his email.