Rural resilience through continued learning and innovation

Abstract

The article investigates how rural businesses demonstrate resilience when faced with adversities and the processes they utilise to survive. The work explores rural resilience through the use of learning and innovation in small rural enterprises. Drawing on case study work from rural England the results indicate that individual businesses find ways to overcome adversities and, through learning how to cope with them, create a resilient culture. Individuals businesses use various resources, and in some cases innovate, in order to continue business operations during difficult times. Continual learning becomes an important aspect of incremental innovations which are required merely for the business to survive. The work is timely as many small enterprises face difficulties in the wake of instability in the economic world.

Exploring the contribution of rural enterprises to local resilience

“…Evidence suggests that resilience at the individual and community level is the key to managing significant stressors present in rural communities and that the individual resilience of rural business owners can assist in creating or enhancing resilience at the community level (Glover, 2012). The literature reviewed in this paper so far suggests that rural enterprises might be well placed to instigate, guide and lead processes enhancing community resilience.…”

“…The findings are then described, demonstrating the economic and social contributions of rural businesses to local resilience, including an analysis of how and why business owners behave as they do. While the focus is on their economic and social contributions, the paper also refers to the environmental concerns of rural businesses, as all three components e economic, social and environmental e are seen as essential for sustainable rural development (Glover, 2012;McMorran et al, 2014;Schouten et al, 2012;Wilson, 2012). The final section of the paper discusses the findings with reference to existing literature and highlights the key implications for policy-makers and researchers.…”

Resilience and why it matters for farm management

“…Similar to resilience of SMEs, there been studies of how farms cope with change, e.g. with the impact of BSE in Canada (Anderson and McLachlan, 2012); of dairy farmers in the UK coping with foot-andmouth disease (Glover, 2012); the resilience of farms in Australia in the face of protracted drought (Sysak, 2013) and in New Zealand in the face climate change (Kenny, 2011); strategies of Austrian family farmers to build resilience (Darnhofer, 2010); and how French beef farmers maintain their flexibility in the face of market variations and climatic fluctuations (Astigarraga and Ingrand, 2011). Of course, there is a whole body of literature on how farms cope with change over the long term, but while studying the same phenomena, they do not refer to the resilience framework (e.g.…”

Ciclo adaptativo y cambio rural: el enfoque territorial en la gestión de la resiliencia rural

“…Las primeras condicionan las arenas políticas en las que se toman decisiones, cómo se distribuyen los costes y los beneficios, y quiénes pueden participar en la toma de decisiones. En cuanto a los procesos productivos, las reformas llevan a abandonar actividades que no son rentables o eficientes, invertir en nuevos productos o rediseñar los existentes o diversificar en los cultivos (GLOVER, 2012;MC FADDEN, 2014;PEERLINGS et al, 2014). Si el propio sistema es capaz de identificar reglas o procesos obsoletos y reemplazarlos o generar nuevos mecanismos para salir de la crisis, el sistema mostrará una resiliencia alta.…”