“It’s Us, You Know, There’s a Feeling of Community”: Exploring Notions of Community in a Consumer Co-operative

Abstract

The notion of community infers unity and a source of moral obligations in an organisational ethic between individuals or groups. As such, a community, having a strong sense of collective identity, may foster collective action to promote social change for the betterment of society. This research critically explores notions of community through analysing discursive identity construction practices within a member owned urban consumer cooperative (CC) public house in the UK. A strong sense of community is an often-claimed CC characteristic. The paper's main contributions stem from using the lens of identity work to critically unpack the notion of community through highlighting paradoxical tensions of community residing within CCs. The findings reveal that the notion of community may be illusionary with counter-veiling forces, one that reflects a more traditional sense of connection, attachment and communion, and the other of boundaries, disconnection or division. As these repertoires collide, tensions are evident between the hegemonic discourse of neoliberal managerialism and that of democratic collective ownership. Despite these individual level tensions, communities may operate within boundaries enabling an organisational and societal ethic, beyond the individual.

Local relationships matter! The impact of intellectual capital on entrepreneurial bricolage in African social entrepreneurs

“…Essentially, these cultural characteristics of a strong form of collectivism also may generate pattern of behaviors (Kolk & Rivera‐Santos, 2018; Zoogah et al, 2015). As consequence, our results inform the literature on knowledge management and intellectual capital, highlighting that the quality of relationships and external support may result from peculiar characteristics of African countries, such as a strong sense of belonging (Lashitew et al, 2020) and a sense of community (Michalopoulos & Papaioannou, 2015; Wells et al, 2019). Further, African countries strongly share a social entrepreneurial orientation (Bacq et al, 2015) and therefore represent a fruitful ground to study the social entrepreneurship phenomenon (Ciambotti et al, 2020; Zahra et al, 2009).…”

“…Moreover, research in social entrepreneurship demonstrates the relevance of social ties, informal networks, and community engagement for social entrepreneurs. For instance, Wells, Ellis, Slack, and Moufahim (2019) document the importance of engaging the community in cooperatives for the sustainability of the company. This study supports Seelos et al (2011) which revealed the importance of community embeddedness for social entrepreneurs.…”

(Counter) accounting for hybrid organising: a case of the Great Exhibition of the North

“…In analysing the data, we followed an iterative method similar to that outlined in Smith-Lacroix et al (2012) and commonly applied to interview-based work (Grossi and Thomasson, 2015; Thomson et al , 2015) during which we reflected on our contextual understanding of the data (Wells et al , 2019). A number of steps were undertaken in this process.…”

Exploring multi-stakeholder value co-creation as an entrepreneurial approach to survival and sustainability: The case of Pennine Pubs

“…This independence enables the owner to innovate tactically and strategically. Pubs are usually the focal point of British communities and are particular valued as community assets within rural settlements, where they are usually the most popular places for local residents to relax, socialise, drink and eat (Cabras and Reggiano, 2010;Mount and Cabras, 2015;Wells et al, 2019).…”