Abstract

This study focuses on the role of smart farmers in applying what they learned to develop careers and agritourism business in the localities and investigates the relationship between knowledge-oriented leadership and knowledge management on business competency, innovation culture, and innovation performance. This study gathers data from smart farmers in the Thailand’s educational system who had studied from higher education courses, used their knowledge to develop agritourism, and their communities. The data is collected from 413 smart farmers in each community who attend agritourism. The results from structural equation model (SEM) using AMOS reveals that knowledge-oriented leadership is correlated with knowledge management and innovation performance. Knowledge management is a mediating variable that had a correlation with business competency and innovation culture. While, business competency was not correlated with innovation performance. This likely indicates that smart farmers lacked the knowledge essential to integrating business practices into innovation development. It shows the wide range of knowledge-oriented leadership to solve community problems and explore factors that support agritourism business and innovation goals. The study can prove the relationship of Thai smart farmers with knowledge-oriented leadership to success factors and scarcity variables that require to develop in the future.