How do an individual’s values drive their involvement to develop a sustainable community business?

Gardner, Mandy

Abstract

Community businesses (CB) are not-for-profit trading organisations created to serve a purpose: geographically situated, contextually embedded and accountable to the local community that they serve. Despite their vital role within their communities, little is known about the individuals who lead them.

This is important research because without a stream of people willing to take on these roles, CBs will fold. In these post-COVID times communities rely on CBs more than ever, as they embody community values. This research has two key objectives: to identify who CBs should be recruiting and to provide funders with the information they need to support them.

This thesis presents the results of exploratory research carried out between March 2018 and November 2020. A mixed methods methodology was utilised to identify CB leaders’ values and the roles that those values play in engaging with CBs across England. First, a focus group of 13 CB leaders identified prosocial values and community empowerment as key drivers for engagement. Second, the results of the focus group informed the construction of a questionnaire for dissemination across three time-separated waves of semi-structured interviews with 32 CB leaders for the purpose of gathering contextual data regarding their value. Third, a Values Card exercise was designed using Rokeach’s (1973) values to identify an individual’s value set and measure their stability. Fourth and finally, an on-line questionnaire was completed by 111 CB leaders that permitted the testing of theory developed in this PhD and the provision of generalised data that were used to generate policy recommendations to analyse and answer the research questions.

This thesis contributes to theory in three ways. First, it proposes the use of a definition of CBs that can be used by academics and CB organisations, and this definition was validated by CB leaders. Second, it developed and constructed a typology of CB leaders based on their values, which can be used to identify and segment CB leaders and support their development. Third, by measuring the stability of CB leaders’ values over time, the thesis provides evidence of value changes within the context of the COVID-19 lockdown.

This exploratory research provides a strong foundation for the future analysis of the role of CB leaders’ values and how they affect the sustainability of CBs. The findings have implications for policymakers and funders. Power to Change has used the constructed typology to support their CB leadership development programmes.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Feb 2, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 20, 2023
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/8808248
• Award Date: Apr 20, 2023