Social enterprise to social value chain: Indigenous entrepreneurship transforming the native food industry in Australia

Abstract

Sharon Winsor was not intent on becoming one of Australia’s leading female Indigenous entrepreneurs, it was rather unexpected. In seeking to escape from an abusive relationship and provide for her family, she turned to her knowledge of native foods and love of ‘wild harvesting’ from her childhood, to develop a thriving business. Her traditional knowledge of harvesting native foods has now led to the creation of products such as lemon myrtle sweet chilli sauce, Davidson plum syrup and cosmetics using ingredients such as Kakadu plum, emu oil, lemon myrtle and wild berry. Sharon now finds herself in a position where increased opportunities for international expansion are demanding increased volume and scale from her rural operations, where she works with Indigenous communities. She faces three key challenges about the future of Indigiearth:1.How can Indigiearth achieve scale while maintaining profitability and social mission?2.How can Indigiearth protect its competitive advantage in the face of increased local agricultural competition, as Indigenous crops increase in value?3.How can traditional knowledge be both shared and protected for community development (jobs and wealth creation) and for future generations?The New Year is close and Sharon already has received large orders coming in from Europe and there is much interest from China and Japan. These decisions will determine how Indigiearth is structured, with whom it needs to partner to develop the Indigenous food industry, and how it will need to work with stakeholders on the issue of traditional knowledge while meeting the growing needs of the company. Sharon has a passion for her native products and wants to preserve the knowledge and respect that goes into her products – the dilemmas she is facing are putting her under immense pressure. She may choose to expand while maintaining the integrity of her business – but how can this be done?

Accounting and First Nations: A Systematic Literature Review and Directions for Future Research

“…2015; Logue et al. 2018). A more contentious use of traditional lands is in the extractive industries, where First Nations entities have experienced mixed success in exercising their authority over land use (O'Faircheallaigh 2008; Barber and Jackson 2012; Marsh 2013; Haalboom 2014; O'Faircheallaigh 2015; Apoh et al.…”

“…Access to land provides potential for income-generating activities, such as carbon abatement, environmental services, control of invasive species, as well as aquaculture and agriculture (Concu 2012;Altman and Biddle 2015;Weir and Duff 2017). Carefully developed tourism, native food businesses and land management balance commerce with the preservation of traditional knowledge, art and sacred places (Concu 2012;Ruhanen et al 2015;Logue et al 2018). A more contentious use of traditional lands is in the extractive industries, where First Nations entities have experienced mixed success in exercising their authority over land use (O'Faircheallaigh 2008;Barber and Jackson 2012;Marsh 2013;Haalboom 2014;O'Faircheallaigh 2015;Apoh et al 2017;Carson et al 2018;Howlett and Lawrence 2019;Guevara et al 2020;Holcombe and Kemp 2020;Kaur and Qian 2021).…”

Competitive Analysis of Operation Mode of Enterprise Value Chain under the Background of Green Economy

“…e research on the theory and practice of green economy development in my country's enterprises is still in its infancy. For example, the core concepts and characteristics of green economy have not yet reached a unified standard, and a relatively complete system needs to be tested by practice [19]. is article adopts the method of combining theoretical analysis and practical summary, interspersing part of the data support and practical content in the theoretical discussion process, in order to achieve the effect of integrating theory with practice [20].…”

Family, community, and globalization: Wayuu indigenous entrepreneurs as n-Culturals

“…Rather, we follow studies such as Henry et al (2018Henry et al ( , 2017 and in not providing an explicit definition based on historical and other attributes (which, arguably, would be an instance of essentialism), but implicitly provide a fuzzy definition by way of example. As a technical detail, we follow the common convention (Henry et al, 2018;Logue et al, 2018) of capitalizing the term Indigenous when referring to Indigenous people such as M aori or Wayuu from other uses of the term indigenous.…”

“…Recently, Indigenous entrepreneurship, that is, entrepreneurship by Indigenous people such as M aori in New Zealand, has received a lot of attention (Chan et al, 2016;Croce, 2017;Dana, 2015;Kawharu et al, 2017;Logue et al, 2018;Ratten and Dana, 2017;Scheyvens et al, 2017). Entrepreneurship in this context is seen to reduce economic inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations, to preserve Indigenous culture and to protect the natural environment.…”