Collective entrepreneurship in low-income communities: The importance of collective ownership, collective processes and collective goods

Abstract

By focusing on individualised theories of entrepreneurship, mainstream entrepreneurship literature often marginalises entrepreneurship as a product of collaborative action. Addressing this limitation, our emphasis on collective entrepreneurship is contextualised in the setting of low-income communities and draws out three important components: collective ownership, collective processes and collective goods. Through our qualitative research into two community organisations in the West of Scotland, we demonstrate the important interplay of each component. We provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play as collective forms of entrepreneurial behaviour result in community actors empowered to pursue a commercial activity, negotiate with the state and exploit existing and newly emerging social and cultural capital. Our theoretical contribution explains the linkages and connections of the three components to better understand collective entrepreneurship in low-income communities and entrepreneurial processes more generally.