Employee Management and Animal Care: A Comparative Ethnography of Two Large-Scale Dairy Farms in China
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Other UBC
department or school: Anthropology, Department of
data provider: DSpace
identifier citation: Animals 11 (5): 1260 (2021)
contributor: University of British Columbia. Animal Welfare Program
creator: Chen, Maria
creator: von Keyserlingk, Marina A. G.
creator: Magliocco, Sabina
creator: Weary, Daniel M.
issued: 2021-05-26T17:38:15Z
issued: 2021-04-27
description: Farm management can directly and indirectly affect animal care. We explored how farm management affected animal care on two large dairy farms in China (anonymized as Farm A and Farm B). We used a mini-ethnographic case study design whereby the first author lived for 38 days on Farm A and 23 days on Farm B. She conducted participant observation and ethnographic interviews with farm staff positions within five departments in Farm A and six departments in Farm B. In addition, she conducted 13 semi-structured interviews (seven on Farm A; six on Farm B). We used template analysis to generate key themes. On both farms, workers believed that animal care practices had improved over time, due to three key employee management factors: 1) organizational culture, 2) competency of worker and management, and 3) an effective incentive system. Our results suggest that animal care may be improved in this context by: 1) promoting a culture in which workers have ‘grit’ and are eager to learn, 2) ensuring basic worker wellbeing, and 3) using animal care outcomes as performance indicators linked to pay.
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/78443
note: animalsArticleEmployee Management and Animal Care: A ComparativeEthnography of Two Large-Scale Dairy Farms in ChinaMaria Chen 1, Marina A. G. von Keyserlingk 1 , Sabina Magliocco 2 and Daniel M. Weary 1,*Citation: Chen, M.; von Keyserlingk,M.A.G.; Magliocco, S.; Weary, D.M.Employee Management and AnimalCare: A Comparative Ethnography ofTwo Large-Scale Dairy Farms inChina. Animals 2021, 11, 1260.https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11051260Academic Editor: Clive JulianChristie PhillipsReceived: 31 December 2020Accepted: 16 April 2021Published: 27 April 2021Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralwith regard to jurisdictional claims inpublished maps and institutional affil-iations.Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.This article is an open access articledistributed under the terms andconditions of the Creative CommonsAttribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).1 Animal Welfare Program, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, University of British Columbia, 2357 Main Mall,Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada; mchen242@mail.ubc.ca (M.C.); nina@mail.ubc.ca (M.A.G.v.K.)2 Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada;smaglioc@mail.ubc.ca* Correspondence: dan.weary@ubc.caSimple Summary: China’s dairy industry is growing and restructuring to favor large-scale dairyfarms. The lead author lived on two large-scale dairy farms in China and conducted immersivefieldwork where she participated in daily cattle care alongside the workers, conducted interviewswith workers, and collected relevant documents. We found that employee management criticallyshaped animal care on both farms. Workers reported improvements to animal care on both farms,attributing these to improved employee management practices. Our findings suggest that cattle caremay be improved through employee management practices such as fostering a positive organizationculture, ensuring better working conditions, and incentivizing farm workers.Ab…
has type: Article
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0398162
language: eng
peer review status: Reviewed
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute
publisher DOI: 10.3390/ani11051260
rights: CC BY 4.0
rights URI: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
scholar level: Faculty
subject: animal welfare
subject: farm culture
subject: human resource
subject: behavior change
subject: qualitative methods
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/78443