The best of both worlds: how rural entrepreneurs use placial embeddedness and strategic networks to create opportunities

Abstract

Entrepreneurial activities are strongly influenced by the context in which they occur. It is therefore imperative to understand how different contexts enable entrepreneurs to create opportunities. In this paper we focus on the spatial context of rural entrepreneurs and explore how the rural context impacts on their opportunity creation. Based on a multiple case study we find that rural entrepreneurs mix what we refer to as placial embeddedness -an intimate knowledge of and concern for the place -with strategically built non-local networks, i.e. the best of two worlds. Notably, the entrepreneurs seek to exhaust the localised resource base before seeking out non-local resources. Our findings thus contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurship in context and challenge future research to explore how different forms of contexts are bridged in different settings to create varieties of entrepreneurial activities.

Entrepreneurship as a community phenomenon; reconnecting meanings and place

“…In the example above, entrepreneurship has been a significant change agent (Korsgaard et al, 2015b). But entrepreneurial agency was constrained by the prevailing structures of meanings attributed to rural places.…”

Conceptualising animation in rural communities: the Village SOS case

“…The main aim is to demonstrate the potential of animatorship and practices of animation for catalysing rural and community entrepreneurship, that is, provoking (Berglund, Gaddefors, and Lindgren 2016) others to be entrepreneurial and sponsoring, channelling or promoting their entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a socially situated and influenced practice (McKeever, Anderson, and Jack 2014), strongly influenced by context (Korsgaard, Ferguson, and Gaddefors 2015b). Moreover, entrepreneurship has moral legitimacy (Kibler and Kautonen 2016).…”

Empirical Study on Sustainable Opportunities Recognition. A Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Joinery Industry Analysis Using Augmented Sustainable Development Process Model

“…Studies concluded that embeddedness can increase entrepreneurial success by providing access to resources and competitive advantage without significant capital investment [119,120], may determine entrepreneurs to engage in networking activities [121] while allowing entrepreneurs to become part of the local structure and therefore have the potential to identify opportunities [78]. However, other studies [122][123][124] took a more prudent stance, considering that further investigation concerning SMEs and the contexts in which they are embedded is required [77]. This came as a result of often one directional approaches, since most studies focus on the personal contact networks of the founding entrepreneurs [119], while few consider the involvement of employees in the embedding process [125,126].…”

“…Clearly, embeddedness is significant for SMEs [122,134], requiring deeper examination of the dynamics between them and their contexts. Indeed, few studies have empirically investigated this relationship [78,123], as it is challenging to operationalize the concept of embeddedness [115].…”