Community-based rural enterprise in the UK – model development and success factors

Speaker: Stela Valchovska

Abstract: This research aims to examine and discuss existing conceptual foundations in relation to empirical representations of community-based enterprises in the UK in order to draw out and analyse enabling characteristics and factors that facilitate the development of these businesses. The community-based enterprise literature that has emerged within the socio-economic sustainability field is used as a starting point in this research. It has been predominantly founded on empirical examples from less developed countries in the world. The research employs the conceptual work of Peredo and Chrisman (2006) who offer a framework capturing the factors and characteristics that can be associated with the successful establishment of a community-based rural enterprise. Six key conceptual domains have been identified: 1. Community entrepreneurship; 2. Social structure embeddedness, social capital and cultural values; 3. Local and grass root initiative; 4. Multiple objectives; 5. Poverty; and 6. Community resources. The study assesses the conceptual framework for community-based enterprise by developing a case study of one community enterprise in rural Wales (UK). Insights on enabling characteristics and factors are drawn from the analysis of empirical data. The results are also discussed in terms of the usefulness of the community-based enterprise framework for the understanding of social enterprises in the UK. The study also points to factors for success of these enterprises. This opens opportunities for further research towards the development of a model of community enterprise.

Biographical notes: Stela Valchovska is a Research Fellow in Enterprise on Scaling the Rural Enterprise (SRE) project. It is jointly run by Horizon and the MRL of the University of Nottingham among other partners. It also is part of the UK-India Bridging the Rural-Urban Divide research initiative. Stela received her PhD from the University of Gloucestershire by investigating how and why farmers start up and develop their enterprises. Her current research interests focus on the entrepreneurial behaviour of rural small-scale businesses as well as community enterprises which in the context of SRE are used to inform the design of digital tools that facilitate enterprise performance and development