Merata Kawharu, Paul Tapsell and Christine Woods
Exploring the links between resilience, sustainability and entrepreneurship from an indigenous perspective means exploring the historic and socio-cultural context out of which a…
Abstract
Purpose
Exploring the links between resilience, sustainability and entrepreneurship from an indigenous perspective means exploring the historic and socio-cultural context out of which a community originates. From this perspective, informed insight into a community’s ability to adapt and to transform without major structural collapse when confronted with exogenous challenges or crises can be gained. This paper explores the interplay between resilience and entrepreneurship in a New Zealand indigenous setting.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors provide a theoretical and case study approach, exploring four intersecting leadership roles, their guiding value system and application at a micro kin family level through a tourism venture and at a macro kin tribal level through an urban land development venture.
Findings
The findings demonstrate the importance of historical precedent and socio-cultural values in shaping the leadership matrix that addresses exogenous challenges and crises in an entrepreneurship context.
Research limitations/implications
The research is limited to New Zealand, but the findings have synergies with other indigenous entrepreneurship elsewhere. Further cross-cultural research in this field includes examining the interplay between rights and duties within indigenous communities as contributing facets to indigenous resilience and entrepreneurship.
Originality/value
This research is a contribution to theory and to indigenous community entrepreneurship in demonstrating what values and behaviours are assistive in confronting shocks, crises and challenges. Its originality is in the multi-disciplinary approach, combining economic and social anthropological, indigenous and non-indigenous perspectives. The originality of this paper also includes an analysis of contexts that appear to fall outside contemporary entrepreneurship, but are in fact directly linked.
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Billie Lythberg, Jamie Newth and Christine Woods
The purpose of this paper is to explore how a complexity informed understanding of Indigenous–settler relationships helps people to better understand Indigenous social innovation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how a complexity informed understanding of Indigenous–settler relationships helps people to better understand Indigenous social innovation. To do this, this paper uses the attractor concept from complexity thinking to explore both the history and possible futures of Indigenous Maori social innovation as shaped by Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper frames Te Tiriti as a structural attractor for social innovation in Aotearoa-New Zealand and explores the dynamics at play in the social and economic activities related to Te Tiriti and the ongoing settlement process in Aotearoa-New Zealand. This paper outlines this as an illustrative case study detailing the relevant contextual spaces and dynamics that interact and the emergence of social innovation.
Findings
This paper suggests that the convergent, divergent and unifying dynamics present in a structural attractor provide a useful framework for building ongoing engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people whereby Indigenous worldviews are given space to be articulated and valued.
Originality/value
In spite of the increase in research into social innovation, including in Indigenous contexts, the “context” of “postcolonial” context remains under-theorised and people’s understanding of the power dynamics at play here limits the understanding of how the mechanisms of Indigenous–settler partnerships structure social innovation and its impact.
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Paul Woodfield, Christine Woods and Deborah Shepherd
The purpose of this paper is to review family businesses as a subset of sustainable entrepreneurship. It is intended that another avenue of scholarship for the growing interest in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review family businesses as a subset of sustainable entrepreneurship. It is intended that another avenue of scholarship for the growing interest in family businesses and their continuity across generations will be outlined.
Design/methodology/approach
Relevant journal articles were selected and broadly analysed to gather an understanding of the current state of existing sustainable entrepreneurship literature. The main themes extrapolated related to sustainable entrepreneurship and potential directions for future research.
Findings
Although sustainable entrepreneurship has been traditionally concentrated in the environmental and social responsibility literature, there are emerging paths where family businesses can be considered alongside community-based enterprise.
Research limitations/implications
The findings suggest that future research into sustaining family businesses across generations could be situated under sustainable entrepreneurship scholarship.
Originality/value
This paper presents a novel review and summary of recent literature at the juncture of family business and sustainable entrepreneurship. It is useful for directing scholars towards an avenue which has not traditionally had attention from family business researchers.
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Paul J. Woodfield, Deborah Shepherd and Christine Woods
This paper aims to investigate how family winegrowing businesses can be sustained across generations.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate how family winegrowing businesses can be sustained across generations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors engaged a multi-level case study approach. In total, 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with three winegrowing firms in New Zealand. All family members (both senior and next generation) employed in each business were interviewed alongside non-family employees.
Findings
Three key dimensions – knowledge sharing, entrepreneurial characteristics and leadership attributes – were identified that can support successful successions in family winegrowing businesses.
Originality/value
The authors have generated a theory that enables academicians and practitioners to understand how family winegrowing businesses can be successfully sustained across generations. The authors argue that knowledge is a central feature in family firms where previous research combines knowledge with entrepreneurial orientation or the resources and capabilities of a firm.
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Joanna Overall, Paul Tapsell and Christine Woods
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance of taking into account contextual factors when building governing mechanisms, so that the subsequent processes and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance of taking into account contextual factors when building governing mechanisms, so that the subsequent processes and structures are appropriate and sustainable.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper utilises the singular case study illustration of Māori Maps, an indigenous social and entrepreneurial venture to illustrate the notion of contextualised governance. Considering this focus centres on notions of context, the case study method is most appropriate as it allows for a fuller explanation of the specific contextual factors relating to the study.
Findings
In taking into account the unique contextual factors relating to Māori Maps, the paper shows that they have incorporated culturally appropriate models and processes of governance.
Research limitations/implications
This context‐specific case study illustration supports new governance research avenues that assert that context matters, and contributes to the body of evidence that suggests that traditional frameworks of governance cannot be applied to all organisations, with no regard being taken for varying contextual factors.
Practical implications
This case study illustration may encourage other groups in similar scenarios (but with varying contextual surroundings) to develop their own innovative models of governance which suit their surroundings.
Originality/value
The authors have utilised the Māori Maps case study previously in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship studies. The insights drawn from studying the intersection between governance theory and social entrepreneurship in this context are new.
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Life is a sequence of tiny events and most of us feel that our days are pretty ordinary. Chris Farbrother's article is a simple description of going for a walk. That's all. But…
Abstract
Life is a sequence of tiny events and most of us feel that our days are pretty ordinary. Chris Farbrother's article is a simple description of going for a walk. That's all. But perhaps it hints at the benefits of exercise, the healing power of the countryside and the triumph of small achievements.
Deborah Shepherd and Christine Woods
Interest in academic entrepreneurship is gaining attention as pressure on academic institutions to be more entrepreneurial increases. To date, emphasis has been on the transfer…
Abstract
Interest in academic entrepreneurship is gaining attention as pressure on academic institutions to be more entrepreneurial increases. To date, emphasis has been on the transfer and commercialisation of research with little discussion focused on the entrepreneurial potential of university teaching. Drawing on Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship, in particular the combining and recombining of resources and the concept of resistance, we provide an illustrative case study of one entrepreneurial academic venture that emerged from the teaching activities of a university. We examine how this venture, the ICEHOUSE, has evolved and been sustained despite pressure from competing logics from its partnering institutions. We argue that multiple and competing logics by various stakeholder groups led to ‘resistive tension’ which has supported the growth of the organisation.
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Jamie Newth, Deborah Shepherd and Christine Woods
World Vision exists to eradicate extreme poverty. The primary fundraising mechanism that has fuelled its growth into one of the largest international non-governmental…
Abstract
World Vision exists to eradicate extreme poverty. The primary fundraising mechanism that has fuelled its growth into one of the largest international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) has been Child Sponsorship, which connects over 10 million individual donors with vulnerable children around the world. However, shifts in the market, geopolitical landscape, and institutional logics have seen this once innovative product come under increasing pressure. Using World Vision New Zealand (WVNZ) as a case study, we explore the challenges of implementing social entrepreneurship strategies, including the institutional constraints of developing new business models, through hybridization. Hybridity has gained increasing attention in the field of entrepreneurship and has been offered as a sense-making frame for business model innovation within social entrepreneurship. The use of institutional logics to understand the challenges of hybrid organizing in social entrepreneurship has been invaluable. However, as with any theoretical perspective, this approach has limitations. We suggest that nuanced challenges and sources of resistance to social entrepreneurship in established sectors and organizations might usefully be explored through concepts drawn from complexity theory. Specifically, we propose the use of the concept of structural attractors, which enables the explication of convergent, unifying, and generative dynamics. Our case study findings suggest that, paradoxically, the very essence of historical success may constrain future success. To wit, when faced with changes to institutional and market conditions, WVNZ was constrained by the very construct that enabled its initial growth. The challenge that this case demonstrates is that despite ostensibly hybrid shifts occurring in the management, governance, and espoused innovation strategy of the organization, the governing structural attractor of Child Sponsorship has constrained innovation and change.
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Paul Tapsell and Christine Woods
This paper examines the models used to teach and encourage indigenous entrepreneurial activity, with a focus on indigenous entrepreneurship in a Maori context.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper examines the models used to teach and encourage indigenous entrepreneurial activity, with a focus on indigenous entrepreneurship in a Maori context.
Design/methodology/approach
In particular, the paper explores the pedagogical challenges from the perspective of indigenous entrepreneurship understood from a Maori context and draws on an historical and cultural analysis of kin accountability within a tribal context to explore the pedagogical challenges faced when working with a new generation of aspiring entrepreneurially‐minded Maori. Three short case studies are provided as illustrative examples.
Findings
The paper finds that entrepreneurial models focusing on opportunity‐seeking potiki (aspiring younger individuals) will likely remain limited in application until they successfully integrate the genealogical check and balance of the potiki, namely the elder‐rangatira. This rangatira: potiki customary leadership tension has been Maori society's generative survival portal to taking advantage of new opportunities (potikitanga) for 100 or more generations. The paper suggests that while Maori ventures may adequately reflect what constitutes successful commercial entrepreneurship, such ventures also need to be further developed in terms of kin‐accountability beyond current social/economic entrepreneurial thinking if they are to legitimately benefit Maori society.
Originality/value
Although only one cultural context is examined, this paper demonstrates the potential benefit of a deeper understanding of the cultural genealogical setting when developing models to work with indigenous entrepreneurs.