From principles to action: Community-based entrepreneurship in the Toquaht Nation.

2020

Murphy, Matthew; Danis, Wade M.; Mack, Johnny; Sayers, (Kekinusuqs) Judith

This article draws upon research undertaken in partnership with the Toquaht Nation, a Canadian First Nations community, which reveals how guiding principles that reflect Indigenous values, knowledge and heritage shape community-based entrepreneurial opportunity identification. Using a community-based participatory research approach, we leveraged insights across a range of methods, participants and points in time to co-create a decision support and impact evaluation system – grounded in the Toquaht people's vision of well-being and development – that is used by the Toquaht Nation to evaluate the potential and actual impacts of community-based entrepreneurial opportunities across multiple dimensions of well-being. By elaborating a notion of collective effectuation, the research demonstrates how a more explicit consideration of the social and cultural context of entrepreneurship can provide novel insights that enrich existing theories and paradigms, and highlights the complexities of the phenomena we collectively aim to study. • We examine how entrepreneurial opportunity recognition in the Toquaht Nation is shaped by Indigenous values, knowledge and heritage. • We show how a community-based participatory research methodology facilitates community-based entrepreneurship and sustainable development. • We use a co-creation process to develop a socio-culturally sensitive decision support and impact monitoring and evaluation system. • We elaborate the concept of collective effectuation and highlight its potential to broaden the contextual loci of entrepreneurship research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Link to Article